Hello BAA members and buggy fans! Raceday is quickly approaching. As usual, we can’t do all our good work without your help. Though last year’s Raceday was a strange one, the shared effort of this community made it so much better than it could ever have been without. So, we ask you once again to volunteer your efforts. There are three main roles we need covered:
People to staff the BAA tent, who will dispense schedules, spotters guides, and information to fans new and old
People to help in the official timing booth, transcribing race times into our live-updating table as each race ends
People to participate on-screen in the broadcast booth, alongside the illustrious Will Weiner, other familiar beloved characters, and maybe Connor too.
You’ll see in the sign-up sheets that you can volunteer to help on specific segments of the weekend, so you can stay free for any other times. The more volunteers we get, the less weight any one person has to carry, so please encourage your friends to sign up too!
The Spring 2026 Buggy Enhancement Grant application will remain open through raceday 2026. After you submit your application, expect an email from the committee the following week with questions and concerns that they would like to see addressed. Once you have responded to the committee’s feedback, we’ll hold the final vote on your grant proposal.
Keeping grant applications open throughout the fall allowed us to better serve the buggy community by engaging with students closer to the moment of inspiration for their proposal. This doubled the number of projects that the committee was able to consider last semester. Please note that proposals for larger dollar amounts may be asked to wait until the start of the next semester so that other projects can be considered along side them.
Thank you for all of our Golden Goose Lifetime Members who have made this program possible. If you would like to support this program, a contribution of $1,000 to the Buggy Endowed Fund will earn you a Golden Goose Lifetime Membership to the BAA. These funds are invested by the university, and the return on that investment perpetually funds the Buggy Enhancement Grant program, making the sport safer, faster, and more fun for all who enjoy it for many years to come!
Submissions are due at midnight this Saturday, the 31st. The committee will meet next week for the initial discussion and voting, and applicants will have 7 days to respond to the committee’s feedback before final voting.
We have $15,000 available for this round of funding! This money belongs to you as a member of the buggy community to enhance your enjoyment of the sport. If you have an idea to make the sport safer, faster, or more fun, we want to hear from you!
Proposals can be specific to your team. Please include some details on how the community as a whole will benefit from funding your project. For example, you might share documentation of your process, publish a video, or give a talk about your findings. You might build something to collect better data during rolls, test out a new material, or build something to make your chores easier.
For more information on the grant program, including previously approved grant applications, materials and findings from previously approved grants, how to spend your grant money, and more, please read All About Buggy Enhancement Grants.
Welcome back! It is time to submit your ideas for Buggy Enhancement Grants for the spring semester! If you have ideas that you think will enhance your buggy experience, we want to hear from you!
Submissions are due by January 31st, and will be reviewed by the committee the following week. Applicants will have 1 week to respond to the committee’s feedback before the final voting.
Proposals can be specific to your team. Please include some details on how the community as a whole will benefit from funding your project. For example, you might share documentation of your process, publish a video, or give a talk about your findings. You might build something to collect better data during rolls, test out a new material, or build something to make your chores easier.
Last semester, $7,370 was awarded to grant recipients, a new record! Every project that applied during the initial campaign was fully funded. We kept applications open for the full semester, which allowed us to fund and additional 3 projects!
For more information on the grant program, including previously approved grant applications, materials and findings from previously approved grants, how to spend your grant money, and more, please read All About Buggy Enhancement Grants.
The BAA Teams Committee has three funding opportunities available to current buggy teams for the 2025-2026 academic year:
We are continuing to offer our New Build Grant. If your team has not rolled a new buggy in the past 4 years, the BAA will reimburse up to $500 of build related expenses. This applies to new and ongoing builds.
In addition to the New Build Grant, we’re excited to announce the availability of a Retrofit Grant. This grant is available to fund up to $300 for retrofits on any currently non-rollable buggy to make it rollable and bylaws compliant.
Both of these grants are handled on a reimbursement basis. Reach out to Diya Nuxoll <diyanuxoll@cmubuggy.org> if you are interested in taking advantage of this funding!
And finally, as a continuation of our previous Hard Point Retrofit Funding, the BAA has provided Sweepstakes with funds to bulk purchase the supplies required for the recommended hard point retrofit methodology. If you are interested in performing this retrofit, please contact the RD26 Sweepstakes Mechanical Safety Chair, Sam Green <slgreen@andrew.cmu.edu>.
As always, even if none of these apply to your team, reach out to the BAA Teams Committee if you would like help finding sustainable sources of funding for your team, need advice to support your build, or need to find an extra set of hands for a critical work session.
Hello, alumni! Homecoming’s best event, Mini-Raceday, is coming up quickly– November 8 and 9, to be exact. We need volunteers to help with timing buggies, and possibly with some sort of broadcast or recording effort. If you’re interested in helping, please sign up here: cmubuggy.org/volunteer
To better serve the Buggy community, we will be keeping the Buggy Enhancement Grant application open all semester. Half of the remaining unallocated funds from the grant pool will be available on a first-come-first-served basis.
After you submit your application, expect an email from the committee the following week with questions and concerns that they would like to see addressed. Once you have responded to the committee’s feedback, we’ll hold the final vote on your grant proposal.
We have an exciting update on the Buggy Enhancement Grant drone project. This week was our first test of automatically generating composite images of the driver’s line for every buggy for a full day of rolls. This system enables quick turnaround for driver’s to analyze their line and make incremental improvements as they work up to raceday speed. The original drone footage gives an incomparable view of the speed and handling of the buggy as the driver navigates through the chute, and the composite images highlight minute differences in the geometry of the turn.
This is a multidisciplinary multi-organization project led by Tjaden “TJ” Bridges of SDC, and received funding as part of the spring 2024 Buggy Enhancement Grant campaign. It truly captures the spirit of the Buggy Enhancement Grant program by making the sport faster, safer, and more enjoyable for everyone.
The footage and images are tools for you to make your team safer and faster. They are not a substitute for caution and good judgement in how the drivers, mechanics, and pushers plan how to safely get the team up to speed.
Behind the Scenes
On the Ground
The biggest challenge for this project came from the logistics of getting permission from everyone to have the drone in the air during their rolls and ensuring all of the equipment is prepped and ready for every day of rolls.
In the Air
Wind conditions permitting, we record from 50 meters above the northwest corner of Schenley Drive and Frew Street with the camera is tilted down at 55 degrees. We try to keep a few meters leading up to the chute flag in view so drivers have good feedback on the timing of when they should start the turn.
On the Web
The image compositing is done with an OpenCV Python script. A background subtractor generates an on the fly model of the road and highlights differences between frames. A blob detector then identifies candidate moving objects in each frame, and a set of Kalman filters track the trajectories between frames. This allows us to filter out small motion and slow moving objects, but the occasional goose in flight still gets its own line photo. The relevant frames are all aligned to the first frame for each buggy, and the tracking data gives us a mask to efficiently apply a bit of math to the pixel values that selectively lightens or darkens the composite image. Labeling the images with the org/buggy is still a manual process, but we’re working on training an image classifier to auto tag the images.
I am overjoyed to announce that 100% of the grant applications we received for the Fall 2025 grant campaign have been funded! Thank you to all of our applicants for taking time to assemble such strong applications!
Caroline Kiesnowski received funding to install an electrical hookup for the shared mill that resides between the Fringe and Apex shops.
Adithi Phadke received funding to build RTK data loggers for SPIRIT Racing Systems.
Frank Robb received funding to purchase FIA impact data recorders for potentially the entire fleet of rolling buggies. The grant funds hardware for any rolling buggy, so please reach out if you are interested in collecting this data for your team.
Wade Gordon received funding to purchase software and equipment to facilitate getting real time footage from a drone to the broadcast truck.
This week, the 100+ Years of Buggy History series continues on its “fourth school year post-Raceday” schedule and brings you…2022! After a 2 year postponement, we’re finally able to celebrate Buggy100! It’s the first Raceday of the post-COVID era, though “post-COVID” is a bit of a misnomer since COVID affects at least 1 team on Raceday. It’s also the first Raceday of the post-Skibo Gym era, meaning one fewer lane for teams to roll in. And mother nature made for a rocky return in the Spring. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
