Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

Flex Talk: New Engineering Talent Joining the Electronics Industry

After a short period on the team, I was fortunate enough to become involved with the electrical design of one of the subsystems of the car. For some background, our team is broken up into two divisions: engineering and operations. The operations division handles most of the business side of the team while engineering obviously handles the engineering side. The engineering division is then broken up by discipline, including the vehicle dynamics team, aerodynamics and structures team, and controls team.

A lot of computer engineers fall into the controls team, which essentially handles all of the electrical systems on the car. From there, each team typically has subgroups that are broken up by functionality. For instance, the vehicle dynamics team has a suspension group and a steering group whereas the controls team has a battery group, a dashboard group, etc. Each of the subgroups in the controls team typically has a PCB associated with it. So, I was fortunate enough to be involved in PCB design and actually design one of the electrical systems in our car. The solar project really gives its members ownership in their work. I can tell you from experience that it’s quite rewarding.

Dunn: How long is a typical build cycle for a car from start to finish?

Figure 4: Ross traveling in Australia and New Zealand while attending the World Solar Challenge.

Olson: I joined right at the start of our last car’s build cycle, which would have been at the beginning of 2017. Whoa, that’s over two years ago! That just hit me. And each of our cars operates over a two-year cycle. The first year is typically spent designing while the second year is used to build the car. We don’t get a full two years to design and build each car because we race it in multiple competitions, one of which takes place in Australia. The World Solar Challenge is the largest solar car competition in the world, and it’s a 3,000-km race through the Australian outback. Surprisingly, most of the journey is a little bit boring given that it’s a flat desert, but we camp in the outback under the stars, so that’s interesting.

Dunn: Wow, Australia? That must have been an exciting experience.

Olson: I was selected as a race crew member, so I was able to travel to Australia with the team in the fall of 2017, which was an incredible experience. Our team was amazing, and we got to bond with these people and develop relationships that we may have forever. We had around 20 people on our team. Typically, everyone is over there for at least a month, but most likely longer. A lot of us stayed and even traveled for a couple of weeks after the event was over.

Most of the team ends up taking the semester off. That made the decision to go difficult given my age and desire to graduate as quickly as possible, but I don’t regret it one bit. As I said, the whole experience was an absolute blast from the interactions with other solar car teams from all over the world to the stress of finishing the car and preparing the car. It’s one of those experiences you hear about that sounds too cool for you to ever experience yourself. It’s truly something that I will never forget.

Dunn: I’m envious of that experience. What a fantastic opportunity. I also know that you have been involved in a leadership role for the race team. Can you tell me a little about that experience?

Figure 5: Ross visiting Hobbiton in New Zealand.

Olson: As I mentioned, I became heavily involved with the team when I came to the University of Minnesota. I spent every minute with the team, which eventually led to me getting offered a leadership position. After I returned from the World Solar Challenge in the fall of 2017, I became the controls team manager, so I oversaw 20–30 students primarily majoring in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science.

I learned a lot from my leadership role. It’s funny that I went back to school for the technical nature of engineering and ended up with a management role. The time a leadership position requires took away from the time I would have rather spent working on the technical side of things. But overall, it was worth it. The position allowed me to push myself in new ways and showed me a lot about myself, including weaknesses I didn’t know I had that I’ve been able to work on and strengths I didn’t know I had that I’ve been able to foster. The role has given me confidence that someday I can handle a managerial role.

Now, I’m no longer the controls team manager; I’ve moved into the role of electrical advisor for the team, which involves providing technical expertise and guidance rather than managing team members. I no longer deal with day-to-day items, such as running meetings; instead, I work more with our sponsors and assist with the technical challenges our members face. It has given me more time to work on my technical work. Right now, we’re trying to finish up the design of our next car’s electric motors as quickly as possible so that we can start manufacturing them and get them tested before our car needs to drive.

I couldn’t have asked for a better student group to become involved with. The insight I’ve gained into real-world applications has been extremely valuable. Being on the team gave me my first exposure to PCB design—a topic that I initially knew very little about. I don’t know if there’s another student group on college campuses that offers its students what solar vehicle teams can because it incorporates almost every discipline of engineering and business. Our team has aerospace engineers, mechanical engineers, computer engineers, chemical engineers, industrial engineers, and computer science majors as well as finance majors, marketing majors, and accounting majors.

It really is a team effort. It’s probably the closest thing there is to running a business while you’re a student except that you don’t get paid and you don’t have a budget (laughs).

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