2019

A major goal for the JHU Baja team for the past ten years has been to instrument the car with sensors and collect drive data. Each year, the project is underestimated by a small team of electrical engineers that get overwhelmed by the complexity of custom data acquisition. As members graduate, the process starts over again, and still no data.

As team captain this year, I identified data acquisition as the major barrier keeping us from doing better vehicle design and set is as a high priority. Having no background in electronics, I knew this would be a huge challenge for me and a team of only mechanical engineers. So I put together a small team and meticulously planned out every sensor and wire needed for the vehicle. We reached out to industry professionals until we were able to secure a high-end data acquisition unit with no cost to the team. From there we got to work and put together an entire wiring and sensor system fitted to our latest vehicle. In less than two months after acquiring the unit, we had a working system on the car and were behind the wheel collecting data! Since then we have been able to redefine our vehicle loads and behavior while driving and therefore are much more confident in our designs.