Our time at Year 2 Winter Workshop

Chris Manning, Kyle Caroncino and Dr. Doug Nelson

One day after classes started we traveled to Austin, TX for EcoCAR2 Year 2 Winter Workshop. While there it came into focus that there is only 15 more weeks until competition and that we are already halfway done with the competition. Pretty much symbolizing that we still have a lot of work to do until final competition in Yuma!

While in Austin a few of our engineers, faculty adviser, communication manager and business manager attended trainings and workshops. "One day we went to Murchison Middle School where we taught the local students about the EcoCAR2 competition," said communication manager Virginia Hyer. "We worked with some of the other universities to create a presentation that involved a jeopardy game and the students absolutely loved it."

Andrew Benoit, our business manager, had a competition presentation one of the first days in Austin. He had to pitch to EcoCAR2 judges, acting as a potential sponsor, for a vehicle part that we needed.

"Learning to prepare a pitch to a potential sponsor was a valuable opportunity as it really helps enhance my learning about the design as well as creating a valuable opportunity to sell a partnership with our team," said Andrew.   

The engineering team was in and out of dSpace, Freescale and waiver trainings while also being briefed on final competition logistics. Kyle Caroncino, our controls subteam leader, and Chris Manning our controls GRA, gave a presentation on the controls modeling and simulation progress thus far for Year 2. They highlighted some of our successes like being software in-the-loop testing capable and getting the control code validated to work on the vehicle!

"Presentations for the judged event helped us as a team to demonstrate our knowledge of the modeling and simulation work that we have been performing throughout Year 2,” said Chris. “It is always really helpful when we get feedback from the judges after the presentation and when the scorecards get released."

Now of course it wasn't all business in Austin. After our trainings were done for the day we were able to explore the city and participate in other activities during our stay.

On our first night in Austin we went to Abel’s on the Lake for Winter Workshop welcome Night. The lake provided a beautiful view of Austin and captured the local cuisine. "I could have eaten the whole bowl of Guacamole," said our controls subteam leader Kyle. The rest of the menu included fish tacos, homemade mac n' cheese and barbecue.

Five Generations of HEVT Leaders

We headed to 6th street as a team during our second night. The restaurant of choice was called Chupacabra, which our waitress told us meant a mythical creature that is half vampire half goat. After dinner a few of the team members walked around Austin and even got to go into the Austin capital building. "Going to Chupacabra and the capital building gave me a good local feel of Austin," said team leader Eli White.

Night three was the sponsor social where we met new competition sponsor New Eagle, voted on MathWorks new shirt and most importantly restocked on sponsor swag. This provided another opportunity for us to connect with other teams, sponsors and some HEVT alumni. We even got to snap a picture with five generations of HEVT team leaders. Although he wasn't in time for the team leader picture, Jon King (2011-2012 team leader), drove up from San Antonio to visit with us.

Eli and Taylor taking a tour of the Capital Building

In our final night in Austin we went to Maggie Mae's rooftop bar for the end of winter workshop ceremony. The team enjoyed the great food and drinks along with the 80's cover band. 2009-2010 HEVT team leader and EcoCAR2 organizer Patrick Walsh got up on stage and jammed out on the guitar.

After Maggie Mae's the team explored the rest of 6th street and then headed back to the hotel to get up early for a trip to the Circuit of the Americas. COTA is the first F1 racetrack in the US and is a brand new facility. We got a tour of the track and learned some of the cool things about the facility. "Visiting a brand new, one-of-a-kind facility is a pretty neat experience," said Eli. “I hope I can eventually make it to a race.”

We had a wonderful time at Winter Workshop and would like to thank Freescale and dSpace for hosting us!