PACE – History

2008-2010 Electric EMV

Student teams from UPRM and other seven PACE Institutions presented their work on a variety of subsystems, including brakes, body structure, transmission and HVAC, and showed the results of structural analysis, computational ﬂuid dynamics and optimization of the PACE Emerging Market Vehicle (EMV) global collaboration project on July 27 at the 2010 PACE Forum. Students. The EMV project provided UPRM students with the opportunity to design the electric version and learn about the vehicle product development cycle, and to work collaboratively with students and industry mentors in other countries. The engineering phase of the EMV project spanned two years, and was lead by Professor Marcelo Alves of the University of São Paulo in Brazil. In Puerto Rico, Dr. Rick Valentin integrated the project into his class and coordinated project objectives with the other institutions.

The 2-year global collaboration project for 2012-2014 was launched during the PACE Annual Forum with a call for institution commitment and team formation. The Portable Assisted Mobility Device (PAMD) project maintains an urban transportation focus, and addressed the first and the last mile scenario as it mixes seamlessly with public transportation and personal urban transportation. UPRM team was challenged to lead the design a small power assisted vehicle that can be taken on a train or bus, or can be stowed or carried indoors.

In the first year of the project, teams developed PAMD concepts including research, market assessment, design process, engineering analyses, manufacturing assessments, and a final design proposal, including a non-running scale model. Our team consisted of one Industrial Design Institution, Monash University, and multiple Manufacturing and Engineering Institutions. Thirty-two PACE Institutions participated in the PAMD project, comprising a total of seven global collaborative teams.

2012-2014

2014 Road Test Competition

The Siemens PLM Software PACE Excellence in PLM Award was presented to the our team for demonstrating the most effective use of NX design, simulation and Teamcenter software in our vehicles in support of PACE RSMS Competition deliverables.

2015-2016 PACE Excellence in PLM Award

2014-2016 Reconfigurable Shared-Use Mobility Systems Competition

Enthusiasm and competitive spirits ran high as more than 160 students from 37 PACE schools met at the University of São Paulo for the first year of the PACE Reconfigurable Shared-Use Mobility Systems (RSMS) global project competition in July. Eight multi-university teams competed for prizes in industrial design, customer insight, product engineering, manufacturing engineering, and collaboration. A physical design review competition, complete with 3D scale models and storyboards, was a new element for 2015. With the increased growth of urban areas and the transformation to a sharing economy, a purpose built vehicle designed to be used in a various sharing models could be an attractive mobility alternative in growing dense urban environments. The competition challenge was to design an RSMS solution for a specific market, involving a system of components or modules that can be combined into a variety of configurations to fulfill different mobility requirements. Each team chose a target market and designed a solution to address the transportation needs of that market for a variety of passenger vehicle and cargo delivery needs in product categories ranging from bicycle to 3-wheel motorcycle to neighborhood EV. The teams were encouraged not to be constrained by preconceived notions of the automobile, light cargo truck or electric bike. Teams were judged on how well they understood the social, economic and convenience issues of their chosen market and how well their proposed mobility solution addressed those issues.