Last year the team made the jump to a multi-occupancy vehicle called Icarus, which meant starting from scratch. No carry-over hardware, no existing design to build on. Every member picked up more work because of it, and that’s a big part of what drew me in deeper. The goal is simple enough on paper: build a car that runs entirely on sunlight and race it against other universities, through short track races and long cross-country endurance events.
My work on the team is focused on one device: the Driver Control PCB (printed circuit board), the brain of the vehicle. When the driver presses the accelerator, the board takes that input and turns it into a command the motor can understand. It also handles communication with the battery management system, which monitors the health of the battery pack in real time. Beyond that, it reads thermal sensors distributed across the car, drives the brake, signal, and headlights, and interfaces with the dashboard controls and displays. A lot runs through this board.
