Oracle’s cloud technology is being used in support of the Bloodhound Project as it aims to break the land speed record by reaching 1000 miles per hour.
Oracle will be responsible for channelling the vast amounts of data that will be emitted from in excess of 500 sensors installed all over the vehicle with which the record is intended to be broken, Bloodhound Super Sonic Car (SSC).
The partnership is not only targeting blistering speeds and a record that has been proudly associated with Great Britain for over 100 years; it is also passionate about education, and inspiring a new generation to pursue technical skills.
With this focus, the project has become a leading science, technology, engineering, maths (STEM) opportunity for over 100,000 students across the United Kingdom every year.
This initiative targets a critical shortage of skills that the world is facing, as an increasing technological world requires an increasing number of technical skill sets to maintain it.
Richard Noble, the director of the Bloodhound Project, and the man who broke the world land speed record in 1983 by travelling at 622mph, has experienced a huge increase in momentum since Oracle came on board, he said: “Last year I was lucky enough to meet up with Oracle, and the Oracle guys have taken this thing forward. Now we have the most incredible opportunity because they have agreed to store the data and to distribute and to present the data worldwide, and we know that we have a massive following.”
In regard to education, Noble said: “The fundamental problem is that the country has failed to understand that what we have to do is inspire people, and way back in the 1950s and 60s in the middle of the Cold War, we had a fantastic aerospace industry, we built things like the Concord, and the Vulcan and the Lightning and the TSR2, really pushed the boundary, and this inspired huge numbers of kids to be scientists and engineers.”
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While Oracle will be central to the education element of the partnership, it will also be central to the attempt to break the world land speed record and helping Bloodhound hit 1000mph. Oracle technology will be able to provide real-time visibility of the performance of technologies and components within the Bloodhound SSC itself.
John Abel, Head of Technology and Cloud UK, Oracle, said: “We are pushing the boundaries of what you can do with data today, we are moving into augmented and virtual reality, the idea is we will be blending different data from special data and the mapping of the desert, through to weather data, and then amalgamated with car data. It does not matter what kind of student you are in STEM, you can come from different angles to look at the data.”
“We also want to allow students to go inside the data, so using virtual reality it would be possible for a school child to stand next to the car at a thousand miles an hour and pull one of the back panels off and see a data sensor flow data out. This would be the first time ever that students can immerse themselves with the reality of what Andy Green is going to go through when he achieves the land speed record,” said Abel.
The new world land speed record will be attempted using the Bloodhound SSC in October 2017, and it will be made in South Africa with Andy Green as the driver, the first to achieve supersonic status. The desert area known as the Hakskeen Pan has already undergone preparation for the attempt, and the world will be watching.
