This item was submitted to Loughborough’s Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) by the author and is made available under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions. For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ A SYSTEM FOR AIDING THE USER ASSIMILATION OF ACQUIRED MOTORSPORT DATA By Matthew C. Parker BEng. (Hons) DIS A Doctoral Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University 2010 © M. C. Parker (2010) AAbbssttrraacctt A racing car is a complex machine, featuring many adjustable components, used to influence the car‟s performance and tune it to a circuit, the prevailing conditions and the driver‟s style. A race team must continually monitor the car‟s performance and a race engineer communicates with the driver to decide how best to optimise the car as well as how to extract most from the driver himself. Analysis of acquired vehicle performance data is an intrinsic part of this process. This thesis presents an investigation into methods to aid the motorsport user‟s assimilation of acquired vehicle performance data. The work was directly prompted by personal experience and published opinion. These both find that the full potential of acquired data in motorsport is seldom realised, primarily because of the time available to analyse data with the resources available to a racing team. A complete solution including data management methods and visualisation tools was conceived here as a means of addressing these issues. This work focuses on part of the overall solution concept; the development of a visualisation application giving the user a detailed and realistic three-dimensional replay of a data set. The vehicle‟s motion is recreated from acquired data through a kinematic vehicle model driven by measured damper and ride height data. Ground displacement is computed from wheel speed and accelerometer measurements as well as a new optical sensor approach aiming to achieve better accuracy. This implements a two dimensional auto-correlation of doubly exposed ground images, calibrated to distance on the basis of an integrated ride height measurement. Three sensor units are used to allow not only displacement but also heading data to be derived. The result of the work described in this thesis is the proof of principle of both a display and sensor system, both of which were deemed worthy of further study and development to fully meet the demands of the motorsport application. The visualisation tool presented a new and applicable method of viewing acquired data, whilst the sensor was proven as a new method of deriving vehicle position data, from potentially low cost hardware. ii “…racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.” Steve McQueen iii For Mum, Dad, Jo and Rach. iv AAcckknnoowwlleeddggeemmeennttss I must first thank my supervisor Professor Graham Hargrave at the beginning of what will be a long list, for firstly working to give me the opportunity to be able to come back to Loughborough University and research an area of such interest to me. His support throughout the work, particularly with the various hardware and time problems faced, has been invaluable. I must also thank Roly Vincini of P1 Motorsport and Jeff Allen of Scion Sprays for their support of my work. Roly for giving me the opportunity to work with a professional racing team and Jeff for his sponsorship to purchase the project‟s test vehicle. I must also thank Adam Airey of Lola Cars, for assistance with testing of the Kinematic code developed here and Benoît Dupont of Renault-Sport Technologies for supply of the detail which allowed the World Series by Renault car to be modelled. Also Ru Sirimanna needs thanking for lending me a copy of Data Power, which proved so difficult to get hold of. The broad nature of the project has called for the assistance of a broad range of technical staff. I should particularly thank Pete Wileman and Dave Britton for all their assistance in preparing the test vehicle, as well as for their reassuring line of advice and humour. Steve Hammond and Tim Rowe were both extremely helpful sources of information and advice when wiring the data acquisition system and received much questioning throughout my PhD. Many other technical staff helped with various aspects of getting the test vehicle running, Jagpal Singh, Keven Smith, Robert Smith, Mick Porter, Dick Price and Bob Ludlum all spring to mind as having helped along the way. v I feel very lucky to have made many great friends during my PhD, many of whom helped with my work along the way and deserve thanks. Ben “Curly” Reid, John “The Job” Rimmer, Ed “The Long” Long, Pete “Pedro” Martin and David “Mysterious” Grimble were always there to lend advice and opinion. Although it seemed a drag at the time (company aside) Heema Unadkat convinced me in to the lab to get the ball rolling on weekend work which would eventually become a feature of my research, which was a good job done. Practical work and testing was only made possible by some of the guys mentioned above as well as Ed Putman, Dan Lloyd and Sian Slawson who helped during preliminary sensor testing. Sarah Mullane and Tanya Le Sage also gave me help and advice on the slightly confusing subjects of GPS and Kalman filters. The final and biggest work based acknowledgement though has to go to “Little” Matt Harrison and Ian “Small Hands” Jordan. I cannot begin to guess at how many summer evenings and weekend days they both gave up to help me collect the data I needed from the test vehicle. I would also just like to say thanks to three other friends who stand out as has having helped along the way, Lucy Reid, Sarah Bale and Hannah Townley Smith; because life isn‟t just about work. Last but not least I must thank my family. My two sisters, Joanne and Rachel have always been supportive and on the end of a phone to cheer me up when things have got stressful. I can‟t begin to thank my Mum and Dad enough though. They have really gone beyond the call of duty of even a parent, particularly in the last 6 months or so to make sure I could see this through. vi CCoonntteennttss ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................................... II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................................................... V CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................................. VII NOMENCLATURE ................................................................................................................................................... XII CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 17 1.1 BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................... 18 1.2 INTRODUCTION TO MOTORSPORT ............................................................................... 21 1.3 THE USE OF DATA ACQUISITION IN MOTORSPORT ....................................................... 24 1.4 THE MOTORSPORT DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM ......................................................... 26 1.5 TEAM PERSONNEL USING ACQUIRED DATA IN MOTORSPORT ....................................... 30 1.6 CURRENT TRENDS IN MOTOR RACING ........................................................................ 33 1.7 P1 MOTORSPORT ...................................................................................................... 34 1.8 THE PROBLEM POSED BY CURRENT DATA ACQUISITION PRACTICE .............................. 35 1.9 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................ 36 1.10 CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE ............................................................................... 37 1.11 THESIS OVERVIEW .................................................................................................. 38 CHAPTER 2 CURRENT MOTORSPORT DATA ACQUISITION AND ANALYSIS SOFTWARE AND TECHNIQUES .......................................................................................................................................................... 40 2.1 THE USES OF ACQUIRED DATA IN MOTORSPORT ........................................................ 41 2.1.1 Driver Coaching ............................................................................................... 41 2.1.2 Vehicle Setup Development ............................................................................ 43 2.1.3 The Crossover between Driver and Setup Development ................................ 43 2.2 CURRENT SENSOR TECHNOLOGY .............................................................................. 44 2.2.1 Speed and Vehicle Displacement Measurement ............................................ 44 2.2.2 Linear Displacement ........................................................................................ 47 2.2.3 Rotary Displacement ....................................................................................... 48 2.2.4 Strain ............................................................................................................... 48 2.2.5 Acceleration ....................................................................................................