The AR tool will help with the construction of the car’s monocoque – the shell of the vehicle.
Augmented reality is being used for the first time to build a race car intended for use in competitive racing, according to a university.
Students at the University of Bath are using a new AR tool developed by technology company Rocketmakers in the project.
When complete, their vehicle will race in the 2019 Formula Student competition run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
AR has previously been used in tests and demonstrations by car manufacturers but it is believed this is the first time the technology will be used to build a car intended for use in competitive racing.
The AR tool will help with the construction of the car’s shell, known as a monocoque, specifically with the application of carbon fibre laminates.
This process will be conducted over a week, with students from Team Bath Racing working in shifts to apply each pre-cut carbon fibre laminate in the correct location.
The Rocketmakers tool creates an AR version of the monocoque with the correct shape, location and orientation of each segment of laminate visible to the wearer during the application process.
It will be used through two Microsoft Hololens headsets, with computer assisted design (CAD) files that the students have developed.
Jack Harris, a student of mechanical with automotive engineering at the University of Bath, said: “After you’ve spent most of a year designing a car, the week-long process of carbon fibre layup is really nerve-racking.
“We’ve been talking to Rocketmakers for months to determine where the best use of AR technology would be for assisting car construction.
“Carbon fibre layup is definitely one of those jobs that, despite the high tech equipment we use for our design and testing, still relies mostly on hand-eye co-ordination.
“Having a tool to assist with the stressful, backbreaking process is really exciting.”
It is hoped that the tool will provide users with an improved work experience and accuracy rate than current methods.
Carbon fibre laminates are typically applied by robots in production vehicles.
Their application in small-scale production is considered one of the more physically and mentally demanding parts of building bespoke vehicles.
One misplaced carbon fibre segment can have large negative consequences for the integrity of the final result.
The Formula Student competition challenges student engineers to design, build and race a single-seat car in one year.
Richard Godfrey, chief executive of Rocketmakers, said: “It will be great knowing when we see the Team Bath Racing car zip around the track that our designers had a hand in making it one of the world’s first AR-assisted cars.”
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The world’s only flightless parrot species was once thought to be doomed by design. The kakapo is too heavy, too slow and, frankly, too delicious to survive around predators, and takes a shamelessly relaxed approach to reproduction.
But the nocturnal and reclusive New Zealand native bird ’s fate is teetering toward survival after an unlikely conservation effort that has coaxed the population from 50 to more than 200 over three decades. This year, with a bumper crop of the strange parrot’s favorite berries prompting a rare enthusiasm for mating, those working to save the birds hope for a record number of chicks in February, which would move the kakapo closer to defying what was not long ago believed to be certain extinction.
Kakapo live on three tiny, remote islands off New Zealand’s southern coast and chances to see them in the wild are scarce. This breeding season has launched one of the birds to internet fame through a livestreamed video of her underground nest, where her chick was born on Tuesday.
The kakapo is a majestic creature that can live for 60 to 80 years. But they’re undoubtedly weird to look at.
Birds can weigh over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds). They have owllike faces, whiskers, and mottled green, yellow and black plumage that mimics dappled light on the forest floor.
That’s where the flightless parrot lives, which has made its survival complicated.
“Kakapo also have a really strong scent,” said Deidre Vercoe, the operations manager for the Department of Conservation’s kakapo program. “They smell really musky and fruity — gorgeous smell.”
The pungent aroma was bad news for the parrots when humans arrived in New Zealand hundreds of years ago. The introduction of rats, dogs, cats and stoats, as well as hunting by people and destruction of native forest habitats, drove species of the country’s flourishing flightless birds — the kakapo among them — to near or complete extinction.
By 1974, no kakapo were known to exist. Conservationists kept looking, however, and in the late 1970s, a new population of the birds was discovered.
Reversing their fortunes hasn’t been simple.
One reason the kakapo population has grown slowly is that its breeding is, like everything about the birds, peculiar. Years or even decades can pass between successful clutches of eggs.
A breeding season only happens every two to four years, in response to bumper crops of fruit from the native rimu trees the parrots favor, which last happened in 2022. A huge food source is needed for chicks to survive but it’s not known exactly how adult birds become aware of an abundant harvest.
“They’re probably up there in the canopy assessing the fruiting,” said Vercoe. “When there’s a large crop developing, they somehow tune into that.”
That’s when things get really strange. Male kakapo position themselves in dug-out bowls in the ground and emit sonorous booming sounds followed by noises known as “chings,” which sound like the movement of rusty bedsprings.
The deep booms, which on clear nights can be heard across the forest, attract female kakapo to the bowls. Females can lay up to four eggs before raising their chicks alone.
Since January, admirers of the birds have had a rare glimpse into the process through a livestream showing the underground nest of 23-year-old kakapo Rakiura on the island of Whenua Hou, where she has laid three eggs, two of them fertile. So precarious is the species’ survival that the eggs were exchanged for fake replacements while the real ones were incubated indoors.
A technician on Tuesday replaced the fake eggs with the first near-hatching egg. The kakapo kept her distance while the switch was made but quickly returned to the nest, seemingly unperturbed. The chick hatched just over an hour later. The second real egg is expected to be added within days.
Perhaps the only thing stranger than the kakapo is the lengths to which New Zealanders have gone to save it. Quadrupling the population over the past three decades has required their relocation to three remote, predator-free offshore islands and the micromanaging of the parrots’ every romantic entanglement.
“We do what we can to make sure we don’t lose any further genetic diversity,” Vercoe said. “We manage that carefully through having the best matches possible on each island.”
Each bird has a name and is monitored by a small backpack tracker; if a bird vanishes, they’re nearly impossible to find. With the kakapo still critically endangered, there’s little prospect of conservation efforts ending anytime soon, although those working with the birds are easing their hands-on management each breeding season.
The painstaking work to preserve the species might seem odd to outsiders, but the parrot is just one of many spirited and strange avians in a country where birds reign supreme. The only native land mammals are two types of bat, so New Zealand’s birds, which evolved eccentrically before human and predator arrival, have become beloved national symbols.
“We don’t have the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids, but we do have kakapo and kiwi,” Vercoe said. “It’s a real New Zealand duty to save these birds.”
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds an egg for candling of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member checks the size of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds Kakapa chicks Tiwhiri A1 and Tiwhiri A2 on Anchor Island Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, Kakapo, Kohengi sits with her three eggs, on Anchor Island, Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 3, 2026. (Andrew Digby/Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
