Hudson Simon

11-11-2022

Indy Car Auto Race Exhibition

The Indy Car Auto Race is an annual event which shows off automation in the

automotive industry. The exhibition occurs beforehand where companies and

organizations get to show off their contributions to the STEM field. I attended

representing FIRST, however I got the opportunity to meet with and explore other

companies in the field.

The most interesting company I talked to was Bell flight. They specialized in

military flight technology, and created a system which takes off like helicopters but flies

like a plane. This represents a very interesting development in the industry, and

intrigues me as to how else technology like this can be used. These fly autonomously to

their targets to deliver people or cargo almost anywhere.

Similar to this, another company used autonomous flight to deliver packages.

Wing used small drones to deliver packages autonomously to customers' houses,

without having to deal with traffic or other typical logistical issues. I found it interesting

just how much autonomy was prevalent, and learned about lots of the advantages of

doing it this way. Not only is it much cheaper than getting a heavy aircraft and pilot, it is

also much faster and safer as the craft are much lighter and accidents don’t hurt a pilot

who would be flying.

Another safety product that I observed was the ICOR robot. This was shown off

by the Fort Worth Bomb Squad as a way to deal with payloads without risking human
personnel. Robots like these had lots of uses, I found, and some have even been

shipped off to Ukraine to help in the war effort there.