Autonomy is a big buzzword at the moment.
So right now,
a lot of our work is in supporting that,
so that we can create autonomous platforms
and vehicles,
that people can build their systems
and services around.
Wheel drives that are fit for agriculture
just don't exist.
Didn't exist
even I should say.
Performance Projects started in 2010.
We originally started up as an engineering
consultancy specifically for motorsport,
but then that rolled
into niche automotive,
and now we cover agritech
right through to motorsport
and any other sort of interesting vehicles
between.
People come to us
if they have some engineering challenges.
Typically design,
whether that's from the Formula
One teams who they know what they want.
They just need us to get on and do it
to other people
who have maybe bespoke projects
and they have no idea how to do it,
and we have to take them
through the whole process of design,
getting things made
and get the things tested.
There's a bit of a running joke.
We're very good at making other people
very rich. Performance Projects future,
it's a really exciting time.
We're developing lots of new products
based around niche vehicles, based around
predominantly around off highway
and all the challenges we see here
so it's rugged vehicles available
to help other people provide the services
in off highway and in motorsport.
So our latest project,
the GoFAR has been an evolution
in terms of our thinking,
but it came about because we'd been asked
originally to provide an autonomous tractor
the Dynium tractor we see behind,
that was all about clean sheet design
of a vehicle to do off highway vehicles.
That led through a series of projects
for us both on the drive
line side because we couldn't
get drive systems for this,
and then it escalated up to people asking,
well we've got drives,
can we provide what you might describe
as a vanilla platform
that gives us reliable transport
so we can put on robots, scanners,
all the other bits that we might
we want to do is build a system and
we would need that reliable core vehicle.
We came from Formula One,
so how on earth did we end up designing
a vehicle that does six kilometres
per hour restricted by legislation?
We're in a really quite transitional time
because we're struggling with labour,
were struggling to be able to recruit.
And so autonomy is required.
So we realised that there was
an opportunity
to create a fully integrated wheel drive
that could be used in agriculture.
There was nothing on the market.
We put together a project
which was government funded
with two robotics manufacturers,
and a university
who would help with the working practices
to create the OxDrive
electric wheel drive,
which is fitted to the GoFAR here.
So the GoFAR’s being used
in its initial rollout,
is for berry transport in polytunnels.
So it's there as a quite a basic platform
but it arrives to pickers
who are picking and filling crates
and they're loading them up
and it takes those back.
So that's its initial
rollout at the moment.
So it's in in use down in Kent in trials
and in University of Lincoln
in Lincolnshire.
It's not an obvious leap
going from racing cars
that go over 200 miles an hour to somebody
that does six kilometres per hour
But the skill set is very similar in that.
One of the things you have to do in
Formula
One is you've got to have very innovative
thinking.
The F1 background has really helped
because it's in our mindset
to be able to create things
that look right that fully function,
but it also gives us a network
and infrastructure that we know about
and that we're able to capitalise on
in order to deliver a final product.
But also Formula One racing cars,
they are niche vehicles.
They are one offs they’re
effectively prototypes.
You don't get to do a load of R&D on it.
There is R&D always on in the background,
but that car, when you design it,
when it hits the ground,
it has to work first time.
Which is exactly the sort of skill set
and mentality you need when you're doing a
working prototype like this.