Communications of the ACM
Carnegie Mellon Tries Crowdsourcing to Develop Optimal Electric Car Formula
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) scientists are using crowdsourcing to develop new ideas for managing power in electric cars. CMU researchers recently announced an open contest to find the most efficient methods for power management, with the winner receiving an electric car. The contest is part of a CMU-sponsored project called ChargeCar, which aims to make electrical vehicle travel practical and affordable.
"The number of variables that could possibly affect an electric car's performance and the strain on its batteries is virtually infinite," says CMU professor Illah Nourbakhsh, director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab. "Crowdsourcing is our best hope for sifting through those variables to find the optimal method for managing the flow of current between the motor and the power storage system."
Basic knowledge of Java programming is necessary to develop a contest entry, which involves a power management algorithm. The contest's goal is to find the most efficient way to handle the flow of power among the components of the electric car, including the batteries, supercapacitors, and motor.
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