Aim Technical Services – Championship Services

An Introduction

In motor racing, as in any sport, keeping the competition alive and the playing field level is key. Re-Launched for the 2018 Motor Racing season, Aim began rolling out their data analysis methods throughout the sport by integrating their market leading data acquisition technology within cars and providing electronic eligibility scrutineering across multiple championships. Detecting inequality in Motor Racing is not a new concept, in fact it has been attempted for many years and on a global scale, with championships using various methods to ensure fairness of competition in racing. But with varying ad hoc approaches to methods, regulations and technology, there has not until now been a clear and effective process to lead the way in the Motor Racing arena.

Aim’s electronic eligibility scrutineering techniques are set to raise the bar and guarantee the parity of cars across championships, to the benefit of both teams and championship organisers alike. Their innovative and revolutionary performance measuring techniques, along with their esteemed hardware and software solutions, bring together two elements never used in unison for the purpose of fair competition in Motorsport creating a truly unique approach.

Not only are championship organisers able to be safe in the knowledge that they are running equitable events, but teams too are able to reap the benefits of Aim’s hardware being installed within their vehicles. The systems fitted are of bonus and benefit to competitors as they provide in depth information to assist with vehicle analysis and driver coaching for enhanced performance.

Aim Technologies have extensive Motorsport experience, paired with their many years of refinement and research developing their software and hardware solutions. Aim Technologies are firmly placed at the forefront of design and manufacture for Motorsport vehicle monitoring equipment. Aim products are used by tens of thousands of race drivers and teams, making Aim highly regarded as the go-to brand for data acquisition technology worldwide.

Why Aim Technologies Championship Services?

  • Improve Safety Controls
  • Improve Detection to Prevent Cheating
  • Customise Implementations
  • Maintain a Safe and Fair Championship

Aim Technologies – Our Championship Services

Balance of Performance

  • Services and Equipment.

Scrutineering

  • Support and Cheat Detection.

Data Engineers

  • Lead, second, backup or support engineers for championships.

Crash, Yellow Flag and Incident Support

  • Identifying Yellow Flag Breaches using Data and Video Footage for Corroboration.

Full Championship Support

  • Full electronic support to include Electronics, Scrutineering and Data Engineers.

Balance of Performance

Services

 

  • Working with championships and manufacturers who have different types of vehicles racing to establish a level playing field.
  • Collaboration with championships and manufacturers to write balance of performance guidelines, regulations and compliance.
  • Ensuring vehicle eligibility across the board; from making sure regulations and guidelines are legitimate to power detection tests, and eliminating the requirement of dyno tests by using live rolling road dyno tests.
  • Analysing the power curves of different cars in championships to identify foul play or if a vehicle is doing something different.

Equipment

 

  • Aim’s GPS logging equipment automatically creates data channels within session data files to measure the vehicles dynamic performance.
  • Our equipment analyses lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration and yaw rate to identify any abnormal data that may elude to cheating, allowing for further investigation to take place.
  • Our equipment eludes to an interface with vehicles, running independently to get information from dedicated software to work out any abnormalities in the behavior of vehicles to highlight any data that isn’t correct.

Scrutineering

 

  • Using the Balance of Performance and championship regulations and guidelines to provide a technical scrutineering assessment of all vehicles in the championship.
  • Aim’s scrutineers will assess vehicle eligibility to identify if and where cheating may be taking place.
  • Integrating with vehicle ECUs we are able to determine if ECUs have been tampered with.
  • By monitoring ECU inputs and outputs we are able to work out what vehicles may be doing differently to other competitors and then measure if anything irregular is happening.
  • Once we have identified any irregularities we are able to work with the GPS and accelerometer data of vehicles to ascertain whether a vehicle is performing well due to driver performance or if something else is aiding the vehicles performance.
  • An example of this would be if a certain vehicle was out-performing other vehicles repeatedly on corners, that would elude to the tyres being the performance enhancer as they are closest to the track, therefore the necessary checks could be commissioned to conclude whether a different compound was being used in that vehicles tyres.
  • We implement our uniquely developed software which allows our data engineers to instantly and accurately identify infringements of pre-defined championship regulations.

Data Engineers

 

  • Aim will provide track side championship and manufacturer support to those using Aim hardware for Scrutineering and/or Balance of Performance within the championship.
  • Aim employee highly experienced Data Engineers; from lead engineers to secondary engineers and
    can also offer whole team solutions.
  • Our backup and support engineers are also able to provide trackside to support existing manufacturer or championship teams.
  • The benefits of having Aim Data Engineers track side include the assistance in hardware support and ensuring all data is collected and analysed effectively.
  • Our whole team solution takes the onus of sourcing Data Engineers to work with Aim’s hardware and software from the championship and manufacturer and places it with our experienced and highly effective teams

Crash, Yellow Flag and Incident Support

 

  • Identifying Yellow Flag Breaches using Data and Video Footage for Corroboration.
  • Video Footage Recording for Judicial Reasons, Incidents and Crashes incident/crash or judicial for accidents and breaches.
  • Our video recording hardware is installed in all championship vehicles to allow post incident evaluation.
  • Video footage recording allows accident investigation to be more detailed and accurate, allowing for effective accident reporting and post-accident recommendations.
  • Footage can be used to corroborate any violations in the instance of a dispute.
  • Data recording allows championship organisers to assess and evaluate any data from a vehicle in the instance of a breach or incident; both improving the safety of drivers and maintaining a level playing field in their championship.

Full Championship Support

 

  • Full electronic support to include Electronics, Scrutineering and Data Engineers.
  • Aim Technologies are highly experienced in providing bespoke solutions for championships on a global scale.
  • Aim will work alongside championship organisers to understand the exact specifications required and ensure that all of the desired outcomes are achieved.
  • The benefits of having Aim Data Engineers track side include the assistance in hardware support and ensuring all data is collected and analysed effectively.
  • We will work with you to guarantee the appropriate solutions are implemented including monitoring and hardware setup, we would be pleased to assist you during your consultation phase, including; assisting you in writing regulations and providing vehicle specific installation options and solutions (wiring etc) as required.
  • Our data engineers will be present at your event to provide hardware data scrutineering support.
Scrutineering with Aim

Information about using Aim products as a Scrutineer

Main Missions

To improve:
1. Safety Controls
2. Detect Cheating
3. Custom Implementations
In the following slides some

Safety Controls

One of the most commonly requested features is to detect, whenever a yellow flag is prompted to racers, and to see if racers respect it or not. Steps needed:

  1. Prepare a track map dividing sectors in which a yellow flag can be
    given
  2. Load a session and identify the laps involved in a yellow flag offence
  3. Double check sector time and/or GPS Speeds in sector
  4. Eventually compare driven lines

Safety Controls

sector time

compare driven lines

 

Detect Cheating

We should not say it, but, we all know that cheating occurs with any kind of competition. When the competition is about performance, a great help to all scrutineers comes from GPS.

  • GPS is a consistent and low cost tool to reliably measure performance.
  • Aim products feature an 8th generation ublox GPS sensor which is fast in data rate and super fast in the startup phase.
GPS Performance

We use GPS data to automatically create data channels within our session data files. Performance wise, of the most relevant interest:

  • GPS Lateral Acceleration (GPS_LatAcc)
  •  GPS Longitudinal Acceleration (GPS_LonAcc)
  • GPS Yaw Rate (GPS_Gyro)

What is most important to understand is that these channels refer to vehicle dynamic, considering the vehicle as if it were constantly aligned to driven line.

GPS always allows effective on track dynamics measurement for any vehicle. Regardless of racer driving style. Affordably, reliably, repetitively. In red what vehicle sensors would sample, in black what GPS sensors allow: effective performance.

GPS Performance

Custom Implementations

We can log any CAN or RS232 data stream from virtually any ECU. Almost all existing protocols are already managed by our devices, defining new import protocols is an easy task for our engineers and a can be managed in few days. Our applications normally involve sampling of channels: Engine RPM, Vehicle or Wheel Speeds, Vehicle Accelerations, Brake Pressures, Throttle Position, Steering Angles for performance, all other possible channels included into data streams or from specific, directly wired, sensors can be added.

Any (custom) computation upon sampled channels can be agreed with us.

FMI OverRev Control

We implemented a very simple control algorithm for some scrutineers working for some FMI (Federazione Motociclistica Italiana)
championships. The balancing among bikes is based upon a RPM limiter. The control algorithm detects how much «time» every racer spends over the limiter. This «time», given triggering flags on scrutineers’ PCs, is automatically performed and attached as a channel into sessions in RS Analysis software.

FMI_Limiter

FIA Balance of Performance

Scrutineering engineers working for FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) GT Masters classes asked for custom computations aimed at detecting cheating and ensuring the «Balance of Performance» in that racing class. Such custom computations use data coming from 4 channels (ECU RPM, Vehicle Speed, Throttle Position, Turbo Pressure) and output a simple trigger value, to state if a car needs for further investigations after any session.

FIA Balance of Performance Computation Model

FIA Balance of Performance ComputationModel

Flag channels

Other Aim benefits
  • All of our software and firmware updates are free of charge, this means that all evolutions of our products will always be available.
  • We set no limits in exporting/importing data for analysis, this means that you can share data among scrutineers, technicians, and also racers at no further costs.
  • We have several export capabilities, for example: Excel, MatLab, Earth, Diadem and LapSim which means that further analysis can be carried out by engineers.