Machine learning, AI and advanced analytics will help innovate the famous carmaker’s products.
The Ferrari sports cars that many of us dream of owning—even if we can’t afford them—will soon feature innovations powered by cutting-edge compute technologies. The company recently named Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the official cloud, machine learning and artificial intelligence provider for Scuderia Ferrari, the carmaker’s Formula 1 team. The breakthroughs Ferrari hopes to unlock with AWS will be used to enhance its high-performance vehicles—whether it’s on the freeway or at the Grand Prix.
The Italian carmaker will deploy AWS technologies to supercharge innovation across all of Ferrari’s product lines—from its luxury sports cars to its racing teams. Ferrari will leverage AWS to achieve in-depth insights into vehicle design and performance.
For vehicle design, Ferrari will use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to create and run sophisticated simulations that will test car performance in a variety of driving and racing conditions. These simulations will be run on Amazon’s custom-built Graviton2 processors—the workhorses of Amazon EC2-based simulation instances that Amazon claims this will consistently deliver up to 40 percent better price performance compared to x86-based instances.
By using AWS cloud and high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities, Ferrari will be able to run thousands of simulations concurrently—a rate much faster than if the company were to run them on-site—accelerating access to innovation. This will provide Ferrari designers and engineers with the agility to experiment with new designs, which could allow the carmaker to bring performance innovations to the market, or the race pit, significantly faster.
Once the new prototypes are designed, they will need to be tested. That’s when Ferrari will utilize AWS analytics and Amazon SageMaker. This is the AWS machine learning platform developers and data scientists use to create, train and deploy cloud-based machine learning models. These technologies will be used to analyze prototypes in real-world conditions to generate deeper insights into the performance of individual components and entire prototype vehicles alike.
These processes are bound to create an intimidating amount of data. To store the information, Ferrari uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to build a data lake: a centralized repository that can store data at various scales. In a data lake, structured and unstructured data can be stored on equal terms—from relational data that comes from business applications to nonrelational data from sources like IoT devices and social media.
Once data is stored, the carmaker will rely on AWS Lake Formation to collect, categorize and clean what will likely be hundreds of petabytes of data.
With these tools at its disposal, Ferrari will be able to examine, in considerable detail, the factors that influence the performance of the car and the driver—factors that range from engine temperature at different speeds, vibration patterns caused by different road surfaces and the effect of suspension loads on tire grip. And how fans react to these instances.
Altogether, Ferrari will be able to develop a holistic view of car performance—one that will allow for improvements and innovations in safety and reliability. Whether it’s a sports car a fan takes out for a weekend drive, or the Formula 1 racing team looking for a competitive edge, AWS will power Ferrari’s efforts to better cater to its clientele.
The Ferrari-AWS partnership will bring innovations to the auto showroom experience as well, making it easier for existing and potential customers to customize, build, buy and maintain their vehicles. Ferrari will use Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) and Amazon DynamoDB (the company’s fully managed key-value database) to power innovative digital experiences.
One example is the Ferrari Car Configurator, a platform that enables customers to customize their car using high-resolution 2D and 3D visualizations that are updated in real time—and allows them to send the specs off to a Ferrari dealer. The AWS technologies will also be used for the company’s Vehicle Information Hub, which centralizes and manages customer vehicle information, providing car owners with proactive, personalized servicing and maintenance recommendations and information.
In addition to pushing the envelope on driver and vehicle performance, the luxury automaker will also deploy AWS technologies to power its Scuderia Ferrari digital fan experience—engaging millions of fans around the world with exclusive content tailored for each user through the team’s mobile app. This content includes virtual access to the team’s garage and hospitality suite during the races. Ferrari even plans to incorporate augmented reality experiences—powered by AWS—that will allow fans to interact with drivers and pit crews.
“We chose AWS because of their relentless focus on innovation, unmatched portfolio of capabilities, and proven experience supporting partners in the automotive and sports industries,” said Mattia Binotto, principal of Scuderia Ferrari. “Throughout our storied history, Ferrari has had racing and innovation at our core, and now we look forward to applying AWS machine learning, advanced analytics, and high-performance computing across the company to deliver deeper insights and even more powerful cars.”
The partnership with Ferrari expands AWS’s considerable involvement in motorsports. In fact, Formula 1 is turning to AWS to deliver enhanced insights and data analytics for the 2021 F1 season. Pit crews and fans can access this data to better understand the intricacies of the sport in real time. AWS will present graphical representations of braking performance, car exploitation, energy usage, pit stop performance and starting analysis. Also on the list of insights is the “undercut threat,” where a racer goes in for a pit stop earlier than the competitor ahead of them, trying to get a speed advantage from fresh tires to overtake the other driver.
How AWS provides analytics to enhance the experience of F1 teams and fans alike.
Each vehicle has more than 300 sensors that transmit telemetry data. Similar to what AWS is doing for Ferrari, F1 uses AWS’s systems to clean that data and run it through machine learning models to create accurate and meaningful representations of vehicle performance—such as whether a car is understeering, oversteering, and entering or exiting turns.
The motorsport world is increasingly taking deep dives into data to help maximize driver and vehicle performance as well as fan experience. AWS is becoming a key contributor to these efforts. It’s a natural fit for a sport where athletic skills are married to engineering ingenuity. In addition, the data-driven insights gained on a racing track can help carmakers bring innovation to their consumer products—resulting in a better driving experience for those lucky engineers who can afford a new Ferrari.
Read more about the engineering innovations at work in Formula 1 at 3D Printing Takes Pole Position in Formula One 2021 Season.
