On the 14th of October, we hosted our annual launch night; a reveal of Redback Racing’s newly built car. The 2024 event was unique, as it was a celebration of 25 years of the team, a silver jubilee to reveal our latest challenger, RB24. The team’s 2024 motto ‘one car, one team’ reflects the choice to build only one car this year: an electric/autonomous vehicle hybrid.

The night was a huge success, with attendees ranging from sponsors, alumni, UNSW staff, UNSW student project representatives, other FSAE teams and Redback team members.

During the presentation, we had the opportunity to showcase the trailer for our 2023 documentary, Never Stand Still, outlining the previous year’s events that have shaped the team to who we are today. To further the experience of our guests, our Data Acquisition, Autonomous Vehicles, and Suspension and Brakes departments conducted showcases and demonstrations throughout the night highlighting the cutting-edge technical projects within the team.

Speaking on the success of his demo, Shady our Data Acquisitions lead details, Shady described his highlight of the night being the photo wall, and getting to take pictures with his department.

'The DAQ activation went very smoothly thanks to Cullan and Kai who brought up a simulation of our new ShadCN rework of live telemetry on the TV screens. I’d like to think that DAQ Alumni and Faculty (Hayden Smith) were impressed with our updated systems. We showed off our brand-new CAN in Cloud system as well as automated log management. We also had the chance to display my Heads-Up-Display thesis which is designed to enhance the driver interface of the vehicle.’

One of our Autonomous Vehicles (AV) co-leads, Sumedh, detailed the specifics of his department’s demo and their highlights:

‘At Launch Night, AV showcased significant advancements in the seamless integration of hardware and software, exemplifying our vision of “one team, one car.” This year, we proudly presented a vehicle designed with AV principles from the ground up. Additionally, our perception showcase demonstrated remarkable progress in cone detection and colour recgnition. We combined colour data from the camera with cone position information from the LiDAR, employing sensor fusion techniques to accurately identify both the position and colour of the cones in real-time. We conducted demonstrations that highlighted the car's autonomous steering and perception capabilities. We showed our control systems and our autonomous software by demonstrating the AV software stack navigating a racetrack in our simulator and matched the car's physical steering actuator to reflect the steering inputs from our high level controller.’

We asked the Suspension and Brakes team’s about their demonstration featuring hub motors.

‘Our hub motor showcase provided attendees with a look into the future of Redback's driveline system. On display was the CAD of our system and the 3D printed models of the gearbox, cooling jacket and motor. This gave us the opportunity to discuss our design with other universities and industry representatives leading to further insights and feedback.’

This was a momentous event for the team and overall, the night was a success. A stunning showcase of the hard work put in by the team, our executives were able to unveil RB24 to all attendees. It was a pleasure to be able to thank all the sponsors, staff, and alumni who have helped us along the way.