ETH Zurich's Top Racing Car Outruns the Competition
Racing Innovation: AMZ’s Autonomous Formula Student Car Equipped with Kowa Optics
It’s a Thursday morning in June, 10 a.m., inside Hangar 3 at Zurich Innovation Park, located at Dübendorf Airport. The hangar is a hive of activity — shelves stacked high with tools, spare parts, and precision components frame the workspace, while in the center, two sleek but unfinished racing cars await final touches. The tyres are still off, the front sections incomplete, but the energy is unmistakable.
Five young engineers, all in their early to mid-twenties, move purposefully between laptops and car parts. Each wears a black and red “AMZ” T-shirt — the emblem of Akademischer Motorsportverein Zürich (Academic Motorsport Club Zurich). This is their workshop, and the team is in full preparation mode for the upcoming Formula Student season.
Formula Student – Where Engineering Meets Competition
Formula Student is an international motorsport engineering competition in which university teams design, build, and race their own single-seater cars. Events take place at legendary tracks such as the Hockenheimring in Germany and the Hungaroring in Hungary. Cars compete in both electric and combustion engine categories, and teams can enter either driver-operated or fully autonomous vehicles.
Team AMZ, founded in 2006 by ETH Zurich students, has specialized in electric racing cars since 2010. Their record speaks for itself — in 2016, they set a world acceleration record, reaching 100 km/h in just 1.513 seconds. Every year, the design starts from scratch, with each new team aiming to push the boundaries further.
The 2022 Project – Dual-Mode Electric & Autonomous
For the 2022 season, the AMZ team set out to build a race car capable of operating both autonomously and with a driver. Achieving this required countless hours of design, fabrication, and testing — all while balancing academic commitments. “It’s an incredible opportunity to work on a project at this level,” says AMZ member Emmanouil Andreopoulos. “We get access to tools, equipment, and technology we’d never have otherwise.”
The build process typically begins with six months of planning, followed by around two months of chassis and suspension manufacturing. At the same time, the software and hardware teams work on the car’s perception and control systems — the brain and senses that allow it to navigate a race track without human input.
Vision Technology – The Role of Image Processing
For an autonomous race car, the ability to perceive the environment is mission-critical. Image processing, combined with LIDAR sensing, provides the system with track awareness and positioning data. This information feeds into the steering and control algorithms that keep the car on course.
In their latest car, the team switched from a dual-camera setup to a single wide-angle camera to reduce weight. This required optics with an exceptionally broad field of view. Their choice: the Kowa LM4HC. With an angle of view of up to 112° for a 1" sensor, the LM4HC met the team’s requirements for both field coverage and robustness. “We tested multiple lenses, but the LM4HC stood out for its performance and durability,” Andreopoulos notes.
Looking Ahead to the Season
With the car nearly complete and the technology fine-tuned, AMZ entered the 2022/23 Formula Student season as one of the favorites. Andreopoulos remains optimistic: “We’re excited to see our car prove itself on track. The races are where all our work pays off.”
In Summary:
AMZ’s project shows how cutting-edge optical technology like the Kowa LM4HC can be instrumental in high-speed autonomous racing. The combination of engineering expertise, advanced vision systems, and precision optics puts them in a strong position to keep competing at the very top level of Formula Student.