Turning a BMW into a Driving Sim!
Written by Loxley Browne
The FAB in FABcamp has two meetings for our Athenians – FABulous and FABrication. We choose to create ridiculously fab and fun mechanical marvels and bring them to life.
In April 2020, as the world adjusted to stay-at-home orders and industries came to standstills, we were busy sourcing parts to create a drifting trike. Our small team of five made magic happen! We saw what Colin Furze had created and adapted our own version from a mishmosh of parts. Our result was a very daring and fun-to-ride drifting trike.
In 2021, after a long couple of days in the shop swapping a transmission in a F150 and discovering the need for a robotic assistant we dreamed up our FABcamp build. In 40 days we went from a sketch on a piece of paper to a cardboard model to a finished and fine looking personal robot that we pitched in an International Pitch Competition. Bottie is our concept that we hope to spin out as a for-profit venture in the near future. Proof that our Teenage Think Tank can create viable products for the marketplace.
In 2022, we chose to create…. [drum roll please] …..a driving simulator from an actual car!
“We named her Simmie, short for the French name Simone, which means ‘to be heard’. We have listened to our Athenians and will FABricate a project that will help to teach in the most fun and unexpected way!”
–Loxley Browne, Athenian Founder & CEO
Imagine how cool it will be to sit in a real car while practicing learning how to drive?!? Learning how to drive is nerve-wrecking! You sit down in the driver’s seat with that white knuckle fear, your mom gasping for air at your near miss, your little sis shrieking from the backseat as you slam on brakes, all the while the stress sweat beads blistering your brow. That level of stress on a busy city street is no fun! Imagine instead being able to get accustomed to the feel of the pedals, the steering wheel, where everything is, but in the comfort of a real BMW that is actually a simulator.
We named her Simmie “to be heard” because we have listened to our Athenians. We’ve watched the angst of wanting to be a great driver, yet having no experience or anyone to give instruction.
The work starts this month with a clean up and teardown. Every weekend in June we will be wrenching, fabricating, and retrofitting the needed components to bring her to life. Our three chosen Athenians will be our presenters providing you with the full story – from clean up to tear down to a reconfigured fabrication. Our version of Reality TV delivered to you through our FABcamp channel at Athenian!
“Working on Simmie, I was able to learn about a car by tearing it apart, finding the root of the problem, and then seeing how it was built. This helps me continue practicing the life skill that even when life sometimes brings problems, its good to work through them. Being able to solve those problems develops you into the person you become in the long run!”
–Akshaya, 2022 FABricator
