PwC helps world champions grow through AI

The Innoptus Solar Team, reigning solar car world champion strengthened its partnership with professional service provider PwC Belgium for the next two years. As an AI partner, PwC will support the students from Leuven to integrate AI into the design of the new car and in monitoring its performance during races. “We want to use more AI in our new car and the upcoming races, but we have insufficient additional resources for such a big project. We want to use PwC’s support and expertise to build a lead over the other teams for the coming years,” says Kevin Vandeputte, Public & Business Relations manager of the Innoptus Solar Team. Patrick Boone, Chairman of PwC Belgium, is also delighted: “We’re very pleased to strengthen our existing cooperation with these talented and driven young people. Our knowledge and experience will help them explore and test new developments in extremely challenging conditions through their innovative entrepreneurship. AI does not get any more hands-on than this. And that’s what makes it so much fun for our employees.”

KU Leuven’s Innoptus Solar Team will be defending its world title in Australia in August. Numerous parameters need to be monitored during the race. Not only the weather conditions but also the state of the car require continuous monitoring and adjustments. “Keeping track and following up on all these parameters manually was becoming nigh-on impossible. We need to keep an eye on more than 200 parameters during a race. We believe AI offers the solution, but our many other tasks and responsibilities meant we were unable to launch it for this project on such a large scale. This is why we were looking for a partner to lower that barrier,” says Kevin Vandeputte.

Service provider PwC has sponsored the team for the past two years but decided to increase its collaboration and support the world champions as an AI partner. “We strongly believe in AI’s potential and were thrilled that the Innoptus Solar Team wanted to play the AI card. This means we support them from strategy to design of the car and the final follow-up of all data during the race,” explains Patrick Boone.

Smart, digital collective memory

PwC started off by organising AI and machine intelligence workshops with the student team. We then looked at where AI could be an asset in the development and monitoring of the car. A central knowledge hub was developed to consolidate all the information from previous years. “The problem was that the knowledge and experience of former participants was very scattered. Alumni chat groups to exchange ideas did exist and there was a centralised file and note management system within the team via the cloud but what we lacked was a tool that could quickly gather, compile, and return information to the team in an appropriate format across different platforms. This allows us to move forward faster in the idea and design phase,” says Thibaut Deliever, Digital Twin Engineer of the Innoptus Solar Team. “AI was also a great help in this aspect,” says Patrick Boone. “Consolidating all the information from different programs, various file types and different years posed quite a challenge. That’s why we’re developing an AI-driven central knowledge hub, i.e. a smart, digital collective memory.”

Detecting anomalies

This is not the Innoptus Solar Team’s first venture into AI. In previous races, AI was used on a limited basis to monitor various parameters and adjust the strategy as needed. However, the enhanced use of AI now allows the team to monitor and adjust over 200 parameters simultaneously. “We make the changes ourselves, literally and figuratively keeping the steering wheel in our own hands,” states Thibaut Deliever. “This is a vision we fully support,” says Patrick Boone. “We’re happy to teach the Innoptus Solar Team about AI’s vast possibilities to detect anomalies and to thus adjust their race strategy as needed. The fact that they make decisions based on data is in perfect keeping with our vision on AI in business: tech-powered, human-led,” according to Patrick Boone.

Sharing knowledge and network

The renewed and thus intensified partnership between PwC and the Innoptus Solar Team is for the next two years. The Solar Team will participate in major international races in 2025 and 2026, including the world championship in Australia at the end of August. In the lead-up to this, earlier versions of the solar cars will be showcased at various events, organised by PwC and the Solar Team. The new car that will be used to defend their world title this summer will be unveiled at the end of spring.

“Our partnership not only involves sharing our knowledge and experience but also opening up our network to these students,” says Patrick Boone. “This is a great opportunity for us and at the same time we hope to inspire PwC’s clients with the applications we can develop together or thanks to them,” concludes Thibaut Deliever.

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