The Formula SAE team is a student organized society that all students at Penn State can participate in.  The team designs and builds the formula car from scratch every year to compete in the Formula SAE competition held in Detroit MI.  The team must come up with an innovative design and put their engineering skills to work in order to compete with and achieve success against the over one hundred and fifty schools that compete in the competition every year.  The team is sponsored by the University as well as many companies such as General Motors, Good Year and K&N Air Filters, as well as many others. This organization is a great place for young engineers to gain valuable experience and see situations with real engineering problems.

The Formula SAE team needs a data acquisition system on the car to tune the car for optimal performance.  This system will be used to measure certain systems on the car during operation.  The measurement of parameters like suspension travel, wheel speed, acceleration, steering angle and yaw rate will allow the team to calibrate and adjust the formula car for all different track conditions and race situations.  The data acquisition system is an essential part of the the evaluation of formula car's  performance before the competition at the end of the year.