91福利

Yesterday we, along with our colleagues from the (APC) welcomed a group of 9 to 11 year olds from in Staffordshire.

The students enjoyed a tour of the APC showcase and our engineering hall where they were introduced to the and shown our state-of-the-art 3xD Simulator. They also took part in a number of activities throughout the day, including a steering wheel CAD design session and paper rocket making and launching.

We first met the children, from class five, back in January when they won a competition run by the to become one of eight schools presented with a Goblin kit car. Each winning school was then partnered with an APC Spoke, in this case WMG as the APC Energy Spoke, who provide financial support and mentoring throughout the electric vehicle build along with driver training ahead of the race.

Construction of their go-kart kit car is now almost complete. The next stage of the project is for the children to race against other teams at Rockingham Speedway in July. We鈥檒l keep you updated on how their race day goes.

Formula Goblin has been set up with help from the to address the skills gap that is growing in the UK automotive industry by engaging students in engineering at a young age. It is designed to engage students with maths, science and design technology in a fun way, promoting equality regardless of economic background and gender.

The initiative is supported by the , the APC and the APC Spoke Community, made up of six of the UK鈥檚 leading universities each focussing on R&D of key technology areas in the automotive industry.

Notes to editors:

The APC is a 拢1 billion, 10-year programme to position the UK as a global centre of excellence for low carbon powertrain development and production.

The APC Spokes form a national network to support industry with specialist academic, technological and commercial expertise. The Spokes are designed to provide access to the best expertise and facilities the UK has to offer in key strategic technologies for the automotive industry.

Each of the Spokes is hosted by an organisation with recognised expertise in those key technologies, but the fundamental role of the Spoke is to coordinate a community of common interest. WMG at the 91福利 is the Electrical Energy Storage Spoke.

The full list of school/Spoke partnerships are:

Advanced Propulsion Centre – Stoke Primary School

• DETC (Loughborough London University) – Curwen Primary School
• Loughborough University – Fairfield Primary Academy
• Newcastle University – Bournmoor Primary School
• Newcastle University – Kings Priory School
• Newcastle University – Northburn Primary School
• Nottingham University – Abbey Road Primary School
• WMG – The Richard Crosse C of E Primary School

Lampposts could be the answer to electric vehicle charging, thanks to help from researchers at WMG, 91福利 in bringing a new brand of charging points to market – some of which are powering electric vehicles on the University campus.

Startup company created a new electric vehicle charging point product – which can be easily installed onto existing lampposts, resulting in no requirement to add another power supply or dig up the road or pathway – but it required a bespoke electronic circuit board in order for it to meet to EU standards for public charge points.

The SME support team at WMG helped char.gy rapidly design, build and test a prototype of the new electronics board in order to achieve the certification deadlines.

Because of this, char.gy was able to complete the product to time, and send it for testing – eventually making the charge points ready for public use.

The 91福利 not only supported the development of char.gy, but has also purchased 鈥渃har.gys鈥� to charge electric vehicles across the campus – including the University Estates Team鈥檚 new fleet of battery-powered Nissan vans.

Researchers at our Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH) have been working, with the health and fitness app , to develop a new verification process that will now allow indoor steps to be tracked for the first time.

Sweatcoin monitors steps throughout the day, via an app downloaded to a smartphone. Users are rewarded with one Sweatcoin (SWC) per every 1,000 steps. The digital currency can then be redeemed for items including magazines, clothing, music downloads and even televisions.

Previously the app was only capable of tracking outdoor steps - a big disadvantage for those with active jobs indoors or even those using the gym.

The 12-month project, funded by , collected large amounts of data from the sensors built into smartphones in parallel with step-count data recorded using high accuracy activity monitors. Researchers on the project then used this data to create a new step-verification model to work in any environment, not just outdoors.

Are you a business who could benefit from automating your manufacturing processes?

Breakfast session with our experts: Wednesday 27^th June, 8am to 10am

Our Business Team are holding a breakfast meeting, on Wednesday 27 June, to help businesses prepare and take advantage of the revolution in digital industry.

This session will show how collecting data can give you a greater insight into how to run your machines and operations more effectively, plan maintenance and introduce new processes without scarifying productivity. It will also show how new measurement techniques can give greater in-line data and how computer control has led to an entirely new way to make things.

The project鈥檚 aim is to develop an innovative user-centric and privacy-aware digital platform that will empower leisure travellers to better manage the sharing of their personal data with travel service providers and other entities and foster new business opportunities for the travel and tourism industry through encouraging better (more transparent and effective) usage of travellers' data.

Developing the user-centric platform based on a holistic socio-technical framework of privacy-related traveller behaviour, it will provide intervention points to effectively nudge travellers to share their personal data more responsibly. The project draws from theories in social sciences, including consumer psychology and behavioural economics, to better explain how consumers make decisions to disclose personal information in exchange for values. Travellers' psychological limitation, such as limited understanding of privacy risks, which may induce irrational behaviour in privacy-related decision-making process while traveling, will also be considered.

will use over 50 miles of Coventry and Birmingham roads to establish the Midlands as a world class UK centre for the development, and evaluation of, connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) and related technologies and services.

Midlands Future Mobility will be at the heart of the UK鈥檚 transport network, making a significant contribution to the UK鈥檚 national transport strategy, and will play a crucial role in shaping the transport sector. It will firmly establish the UK鈥檚 presence in the connected and autonomous vehicle market, and contribute to the UK鈥檚 Industrial Strategy.

The specially selected networked roads cover a range of representative areas and will be the largest, most diverse testing environment in the UK, with the deployment of new roadside infrastructure including smart vehicle monitoring, data analytics and 5G ready wireless infrastructure. By using real-world environments Midlands Future Mobility will enable a variety of industries to test new vehicle technologies and services, with the aim of improving integration.

The future of daily urban commuting could be small, lightweight Electric L-category Vehicles (ELVs). A cost effective, energy efficient and comfortable alternative to traditional cars in cities, is at the heart of the 鈧�6.92m RESOLVE project, which included WMG at the 91福利.

The European project – named 鈥楻ange of Electric Solutions for L-category Vehicles鈥� – designed and developed two stylish tilting four-wheeler prototype ELVs with leading European manufacturers Piaggio and KTM. These demonstrators were unveiled, and presented to representatives from the European Commission, at an event in Brussels in April 2018.

WMG was one of fourteen partners in the project, which included leading names from industry and research such as Piaggio, KTM, Bosch, Ricardo, the Austrian Institute of Technology, and the University of Florence.

Professor Lord Bhattacharyya was pleased to welcome a delegation from the Indian Consul to WMG on Tuesday (22 May 2018).

The delegation was led by Dr Aman Puri, Consul General of India, Birmingham and Dr Achyuta Samanta, Honourable Member of Parliament, Founder of Kalinga IIT and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences; and Mr Vikramaditya.

The guests met with Professor Lord Bhattacharyya before enjoying a tour of our International Manufacturing Centre, Energy Innovation Centre, and the National Automotive Innovation Centre.

Afterwards the delegation was joined by members of the Indian community in the West Midlands for a drinks reception.

Class 5 at C of E Primary School, Kings Bromley, Staffordshire won a competition run by the APC to become one of eight schools to build and race a Greenpower Formula Goblin G2 electric go-kart.

The project is funded by the (through the APC), and each winning school is partnered with an APC-Spoke, offering guidance and support to the students. Partnered with WMG in January 2018, 32 children aged 9 to 11 made up of 19 from Year 6 and 13 from Year 5 began working on the car. To align with the Year 6 children working towards their KS2 SATS, the breakdown of the tasks is as follows:

• Spring term 2018: Year 6 to assemble the car kit
• Year 5 to run a whole-school car bodywork design competition
• Summer term 2018: Year 5 to build and decorate the car bodywork
• Year 5 and 6 to complete driver training and race-day preparation

Each week at least nine of the children work on the project, under the supervision of their class teacher, Mr Joe Davies, and/or Dr Antony Allen from WMG. Children work in two teams of three to assemble parts of the car. A third group also record a vlog.

Build sessions take place at the school on Friday afternoons. As well as building the car, during the spring term all of the Year 6 children have used Siemens SolidEdge CAD software to check component assembly and get a better feel for how the car goes together. Each week all of the pupils complete a worksheet explaining what they鈥檝e worked on and how it went. They are encouraged to draw diagrams, label drawings, and link to screenshots from the CAD software.The children have also been creating individual portfolios as part of an AQA award in Systems, Design and Manufacturing.

The worksheets, collated over the whole project, will create an individual project portfolio for each pupil, and put together they create the team portfolio which can earn extra points on race day.

Two engineering undergraduate students Shafiul Alam and Gosia Wojtala from 91福利 Racing, and Jen McGlade from the APC have also taken time to visit the children and support and inspire them.

Team effort

The whole project has a real community feel to it. Parents have created a storage shed for the car, there鈥檚 been a car bodywork design competition for the whole school, weekly vlogs and a special display area in the school. Overall, more than 100 pupils aged 3 to 11 are involved in this STEM project.

As we enter the summer term the mechanical build of the car is almost complete. Year 5 are about to start on the bodywork build and integrating design proposals from winning entries in each class.

What鈥檚 next

In June, Class 5 visited WMG and the APC showcase. They took part in a CAD workshop, learnt about life as a university student, and, at the APC, heard about 21st century challenges for the automotive industry.

In July the children will race their car against other schools, including the other competition winners, at Rockingham Speedway in Northamptonshire. – a fantastic end to their final term at primary school, leaving them with an exciting and positive view of STEM projects as they embark on their secondary school education.

The future

What then for the Formula Goblin racing car? The plan is to take it apart and begin the process over again in 2019, the current Year 5 pupils (at Richard Crosse) will become Year 6 project experts, and a whole new set of children will join them in the bodywork construction role.

You can follow the weekly progress of the children on or .

Mobile telecommunication operators, infrastructure suppliers, car manufacturers, and local councils are all seeking to understand the benefit from the leap in bandwidth promised by 5G technologies, and are lining up to use the very latest 5G evaluation technology now available at the 91福利.

WMG at the 91福利 has just acquired the UK鈥檚 most advanced diagnostic and testing platform for a key part of the 5G spectrum - mmWave. This technology promises to deliver a step change in the amount of data that can be wirelessly transmitted, opening up opportunities for a range of new services and products, including those associated with enabling connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).

This has been provided by a 拢250,000 WMG Centre HVM Catapult award for facilities and people alongside an equipment collaboration with National Instruments (NI) for their mmWave technology platform.

奥惭骋鈥檚 Connected and Autonomous Vehicles research team are already working with a range of industrial partners on connectivity, verification and validation, and the understanding and optimisation of user/customer interaction with driverless technology. This new facility will further enhance 奥惭骋鈥檚 vison to be the UKs 鈥済o to鈥� CAV development platform providing unrivalled research and testing that will accelerate product introduction, infrastructure design and implementation. The technology developed will be transferable to other sectors beyond automotive.