PI-TOP ANNOUNCES SPONSORSHIP OF SOLAR CAR CHALLENGE
Award-winning Educational Program Teaches High School Students Vital Skills for Future Success;
Company to Provide Technology Platform and Engineering Resources;
pi-topHELIOS to Enable Teams to Track Telemetry Data, other Vital Race Information
Learning company pi-top™ today announced its sponsorship of the Solar Car Challenge, an award-winning national educational program that teaches high school students how to plan, design, engineer, build, and race roadworthy solar cars. The program fosters the development of learning by making, engineering and computer science skills, critical thinking, collaboration and teamwork.
pi-top is providing each team with technology as well as technical advice to enable them to integrate pi-top technology and improve their race performance. Twenty-nine solar cars are expected to race in the 2018 Solar Car Challenge, traveling cross-country from Ft. Worth, Texas to Palmdale, California for seven days, beginning July 17th.
“The Solar Car Challenge is a world-class education program that gives students important project-based skills and experiences, while creating the memories of a lifetime,” said Jesse Lozano, pi-top CEO. “As part of our sponsorship, we’re providing every team racing this summer with pi-top technology to help the students not only succeed in the race, but to develop vital, real-world skills that can help them succeed in the future.”
pi-top Technology Captures, Shares Data in Real-time
pi-top is providing each team with a pi-top laptop, as well as the pi-topHELIOS, a prototype telemetry device designed and built by pi-top specifically for the Solar Car Challenge. The pi-topHELIOS will capture real-time data from each solar car and transmit it to a pi-top-designed receiver installed in the laptop in the team’s chase vehicle.
Teams will use the telemetry system to track their progress, even if miles apart, gathering a variety of data such as exact location through on-board GPS, solar array performance, power consumption and battery performance, monitoring of weather patterns, and other vital race information. Teammates in the chase vehicle will radio the information to the driver in real-time.
PI-TOP SPONSORS SOLAR CAR CHALLENGE
“We are delighted to have pi-top as a technology partner for the Solar Car Challenge,” said Lehman Marks, founder and president, Solar Car Challenge. “We have never had access to this level of advanced technology before, and it should make a real difference for our students as they navigate along the race course.”
The Solar Car Challenge was first developed in 1993 as a high school extra-curricular program, later evolving into the Solar Car Challenge Foundation, with the goal of advancing the exploration of solar power and alternative energy. The annual race alternates between a closed-course race at the Texas Motor Speedway and a cross-country race.
Since its inception, thousands of students from one hundred eighty-one high schools in thirty-six states, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and the Bahamas have taken part in some phase of the Solar Car Challenge Education program.
About pi-top: pi-top™ is one of the industry’s fastest growing education technology companies, with headquarters offices in London, Austin, Texas, and Shenzhen, China. The pi-top hardware platform is an award-winning ecosystem used around the world in more than 2,000 schools, blending physical computing and project-based learning with Computer Science and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) education. The company’s goal is to inspire students to develop the skills of tomorrow and create their future, today
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