Driftbox

Driftbox was initially developed for use in the Japanese D1 Grand Prix series to assist the judges award points during the competition, and has become in effect the fourth "Judge". Every vehicle which competes has a DriftBox Pro fitted during each run, and the judges get a points score for each corner based on Entry speed, Drift Angle and Cornering Force. Cornering force is used to judge how well the car is setup, the higher the cornering force, the more power and skill are needing to slide the vehicle.

The DriftBox Pro is for official competition judging, and communicates in real time to the judges via a radio telemetry system. This system is based on two GPS systems, with antennas placed in line on the roof of the car. Drift Angle is the difference between the Direction of travel and the Direction the vehicle is pointing.

The GPS system used is an RTK system, which gives an accuracy of 0.25 degrees, 0.1km/h and 0.01G.

As a result of the development of DriftBox Pro, Racelogic have been able to use this experience to produce DriftBox.


How Does DriftBox Work?
Housed inside the DriftBox is a high performance 10Hz GPS engine coupled with sophisticated motion sensors. Speed, Postion, Acceleration and Drift are measured 10 times a second. To measure Drift angle, the angle the vehicle is pointing is computed using the motion sensors, and this is compared with the angle the vehicle is travelling which is computed from the GPS.

DriftBox is equipped with an MMC/SD Flash memory card socket. This allows 10Hz logging of Time, Distance, Speed, Position, G-force, Lap Times, Split Times, and Drift Angle.

Data logged to the MMC flash card can be analysed in detail using the PC software provided. For convenience, the DriftBox can be connected to the USB port of a PC compatible computer to download information stored on the memory card.

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