Early beginnings
McLaren is best known as a Formula One racing team with a string of world-beating drivers to its name - from Alain Prost and Artyon Senna to Mikka Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton.
This week the team is at Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix and all eyes are on driver Jensen Button, winner of the 2009 F1 Championship, to produce a strong showing following his recent fourth place finish at Silverstone.
The UK-based company is a world force in the sport, but it's less known that since the 1980s, its success on the track has been partly down to its work on embedded electronics, which replaced the comparatively inefficient and unreliable mechanical fuel injection systems of the era.
Since then, the company's work in the field has seen it combine electronics systems, sensors and networks to improve cars through the constant generation, transmission and analysis of data, a practice that is now commonly associated with the Internet of Things (IoT).
Destiny
McLaren's IoT journey began in 1989 with the formation of McLaren Electronic Systems (MES), which was, in the company's own words, formed "to allow it to become the master of its own destiny".
A decade-long plan followed in 1995 to build a new futuristic HQ in Woking, Surrey, which became the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC). More Star Trek than Silverstone, it would eventually bring MES, in addition to its racing, automotive and marketing teams, under one roof when it opened in 2004.
The MTC is where McLaren develops its IoT solutions for Formula one, which revolve around communication between embedded car sensors and the Engine Control Unit (ECU), the electronic "brain" of the car that takes around 30 hours to build, with parts painstakingly assembled by hand.
McLaren has developed and supplied a standard ECU, in addition to the software that controls it, to all F1 teams and engine makers since 2008. While the software is largely largely locked down to prevent teams from manipulating it for extra speed, they are permitted to write additional software to fine tune breaking and manage the car's torque delivery.
Each ECU contains micro controllers by former Motorola unit Freescale that feed back data from cars to racing teams for analysis. This allows them to make decisions in the garage, pit lanes and on the track to slash valuable milliseconds off lap times.
Peter van Manen, Managing Director of McLaren Electronic Systems, explains that the process also allows teams to constantly improve cars throughout the racing season.
"The cars evolve every two weeks of the year," he says. "This is done by changing aspects like aerodynamic surfaces and suspension, meaning around five to 10 per cent of the car is brand new every two weeks."
High coverage
To provide connectivity between the cars and racing teams, McLaren sets up a high-speed, fibre-optic telemetry system that provides almost 100% coverage on all race tracks including the tunnel in Monaco, the forest in Monza and the figure eight in Suzuka.
Data is sent from cars back to the garage at a rate of between 2-4Mbps over antennas installed around tracks, meaning each car sends around 1.5GB of data in real-time during a Grand Prix.
"Receiving that data allows the control centre to do things like modelling the engine to tell how much life is left, checking the tires to see how much they're degrading, and checking fuel consumption," van Manen says. "The next step is sending that data back to HQ over the cloud to be turned into more contextual information, allowing even richer decisions to be made."
Consumer shift
Though everything happens on a much faster scale in Formula One, McLaren has applied the tenets of its telemetry system to everyday road cars, allowing garages to monitor when parts are failing and a service is needed, in addition to maintaining factors like engine control and fuel efficiency.
Peter Highton, Head of Motorsport and Automotive Development at Freescale, says that many ideas that make it into consumer cars originate from Formula One cars vehicles, which he likens to "moving laboratories".
"There's a certain amount of crystal ball gazing that goes on," he says. "We're always looking two-to-three years into the future to try and second guess what will be required in terms of processing and what might be integrated into devices to make them useful."
Freescale's ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) chipsets are one such example of innovation carried over from F1 into consumer cars. Among their features are adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring and lane assistance, and they can detect activity in front and behind of cars using 77GHz radar.
The tech translates into real-world benefits by providing real-time updates in the run up to potential traffic jams. "If there's an accident on the motorway and the cars come to a halt, they can communicate and say that something has happened," Highton says. "The GPS can then immediately start looking for alternative routes, and rather than ending up in 20km of stationary traffic you can begin to move off the motorway."
Autonomous anomaly
That said, there's still room for improvement when it comes to over-zealous driver-assisted systems, Highton concedes, who's experienced an anomaly (or two) when using ADAS in a Golf Mark 7.
"I had somebody slowing down in front of me to turn left," he recalls. "I started to pull out and accelerate, at which point the car decided I should decelerate and the ABS kicked in, which was surreal. On a separate occasion in Autumn, the car set off an alarm to say that somebody was really close behind me. I looked in my rear view mirror to see a load of leaves blowing."
Highton is reserved on the concept of the "connected car". "'Autonomous car' is a dangerous phrase," he continues. "I like to think of it as a car that works more seamlessly with the driver. When you're driverless, you have these wonderful images of a car driving itself, but I don't think we'll ever get to that. You're always going to need the human element there.
"The really interesting area is crash avoidance systems, which automatically apply the brakes. Most reports point to stats that say around 80 per cent of vehicle crashes could be avoided."
Telemetry in other sectors
When McLaren opened its new headquarters in 2004, it also formed McLaren Applied Technologies (MAT) to take its high-speed, telemetry-led solutions into other sectors - from health and defence to transport, medical care and other sports.
Health has proved a particular focus for the division, which teamed up with the GP Surgery StowHealth and University Campus Suffolk to carry out a one year study using its LifeInsight technology.
The study involved using a cardiac implant sensor to monitor heart rate variability throughout the day. In a similar manner to how garages measure the "health" of F1 cars, it provided data to clinicians and trainers allowing them to measure calorie burn and promote behavioural change. MAT has also applied the technology in Birmingham's Children's Hospital where it has been used to detect deterioration in critically ill children.
Designing the chipset for this created a specific set of challenges, according to Freescale's Highton. "That study had a specific spec that we had to work to," he says. "It was important that there was obviously zero defect quality as it's part of cardiac treatment, and it was optimised for low current drain to give it the longest battery life as possible."
Restoring sight
Freescale has also been involved in the development of Orcam, a camera that attaches to a glass frame and can translate written text into an earpiece to tell the wearer what they're looking at. The device is powered by Freescale's i.MX 6Quad applications processor that integrates four ARM Cortex A9 cores, allowing it to handle however much text is thrown its way.
Though impressive, Highton says that the device hasn't even scratched the surface of possibilities.
"We're finding that the market is evolving incredibly quickly and we're having to provide more and more functionality," he says. "With OrCam, there's more and more analysis that could be done - it was initially just text, and now the latest version could detect shapes, and there are many more things that could be immediately spoken to the wearer."
It's clear that McLaren is only scratching the surface of possibilities with its telemetry-driven IoT solutions, but whether it's on the racecourse, in a road car or measuring heart rate activity, its initiatives show that it's in pole position to drive forward innovation.
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