Lynda Hong Channel NewsAsia 20 May 10;
SINGAPORE: With fossil fuel consumption being one of the main culprits of carbon emissions, the race is on to develop vehicles with a lower carbon footprint.
47 first-year students from the National University of Singapore's engineering faculty spent six weeks developing these cars to be road worthy.
11 of these battery-operated cars are programmed to fulfil certain tasks - without the use of a remote control or human interference.
Fan Yizhong, the winner of the First year student design competition on future transportation, said: "It comes with a lot of research as well. The programme that we implemented is PID - Proportional Integral Derivative which was not taught in the first year, but that is a topic that was taught in the third year. But we went to read up a lot about this concept, such that we can implement it in the programme as well."
Yizhong and his team's "And.I" - emerged winners.
The faculty hopes these students can introduce the first driver-less system on Singapore roads - by replacing the current shuttle buses within NUS campus.
The designs used in these scaled-down battery-operated models can be further developed.
"Going into second year, this group of students will start to look into actual components of the vehicle and maybe electric vehicle, said Associate Professor Lu Wen Feng, a lecturer at the Design-Centric Curriculum, NUS.
"When they go into the third year and the fourth year, they will be engaged in the real EV design. The industry has the needs for skill sets on electric vehicle or renewable energy cars or vehicles. And we are training this group of students to help the industry in the future," he added.
There are currently 55 engineering students in the Design Centric Curriculum and they have teamed up with electric vehicle industry players to gain hands on experience and solve real-life engineering problems using multidisciplinary perspectives. - CNA/fa
