I recently had a meeting with the ARTS Executive team volunteers when we started to develop the activity plan for this session. There are some good ideas in the plan around Big Data, Innovation in Transport and Connected Corridors, and we’ll be having further meetings/conference calls to progress these activities in the next few months.
Two of the activities that we are making good progress include an Electrification in Motorsports daytime seminar in Coventry on 2 February 2017 and we’ve got some excellent speakers lined up for the event. We’re also hoping to be able to showcase an electric motorcycle from the MotoE Racing series, an electric Formula Student car and a scaled down electric stunt plane. Please keep an eye on the community events page as we’ll be posting details of the event up soon. I’m really looking forward to this event and am pleased that we’ve had the support and help of Angus Lyon one of the Executive team members to help us deliver this activity.
John Walker, one of the other Executive team members is working alongside us on developing another daytime seminar, this time on the subject of Behavioural Science in Transport on 16 May 2016 in London. This will be joint with the ITS(UK) and John is currently working on the programme and speakers, so again keep a look out for further details in the ARTS area on Engineering Communities.
I also had the opportunity recently to attend the IET’s Sir Henry Royce Lecture in London on 28 September. Keynote speaker was Chris Aylett, CEO of MIA, supported by a number of other excellent speakers from Prodrive, Wirth Research and Lentus Composites. During his presentation Chris outlined how horizontal innovation had evolved over the years in the Aerospace/Automotive industries, from the early 1900s with Henry Royce’s first car, through to Alcock and Brown’s first flight across the Atlantic using RR engines developed as a result of that first car, through to utilising WWII airfields as racing tracks, which in turn led to lighter weight cars being developed due to the circuits being in such a good state. He then went onto feature all the recent examples of horizontal innovation including Prodrive’s involvement in the JLR/BAR America’s cup challenge, Forward Composites and the HAV Airlander 10, McLaren F1 and the Birmingham Children’s Hospital data transfer project amongst others.
A couple of points that stood out for me from the lecture:
- 4,300 motorsport business in the UK with over 45,000 staff
- In motorsports, every second of time, every square millimetre of space and every gram of weight matters
- The GB Olympic team’s medal winning bike, showcased at the event, cost £30-40k per bike including research/development/manufacturing.
If you didn’t manage to attend the lecture you can catch up with the presentations on IET.tv
John and Matthew Clarke have also been busy during the summer; in John’s case editing a briefing for ITSUK on the Benefits of ITS and Matthew prepared an Insight for the Transport Sector on Big Data in Transport.
My colleagues in our Events Production and Services team have organised the
6th Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Conference in London on 2-3 November 2016. There’s still time to register for this event which offers excellent opportunities to extend your knowledge with the latest developments and results in this field.