Automation - The Principal thing.
Letter on the importance of automation in MLOps and its prevalence in formula 1 racing.
When you consider the speed at which racing cars go, and the risk it poses, you eventually recognize the need for automation. Sharp bends, long straights, sudden collisions, and a wide range of unexpected events can happen in a split second. Hence, automation is embedded in critical aspects of a racing car, not only to improve efficiency but to minimize certain risks. Some automated parts of a race car include:
🎯 - Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) System
These systems make use of sensors recording the steering wheel angle, acceleration, wheel speed and so on, to get a sense of the car’s stability and traction in real-time. They can automatically adjust the brake force or engine power to prevent skidding or spinning.
🎯 - Transmission and Gearbox
Formula 1 cars mainly use fully-automatic or semi-automatic gearboxes to enable them change gears rapidly taking instructions from the driver or a pre-programmed algorithm.
🎯 - Aerodynamic Control Systems
Active aerodynamic elements of the car like air ducts and adjustable wings can be controlled automatically using recordings of cornering forces, active speed and instructions from the driver themselves.
🎯 - Brake-by-Wire (BBW)
These electronically control the braking force distribution between the front and rear wheels to optimize braking performance and stability. This is automated and the driver by practice learns to hit the brakes only as much as need.
It may interest you that one of the main responsibilities of an MLOPs engineer is to automate things. Well why is this important? Are we just automating things for the sake of it? No, certainly not, especially when it does not bring real value. The key objective here is to reduce the amount of repetitive tasks and make things ultimately faster. As an MLOPs engineer you should think, would this script make this project faster? by how much? will this meet the service level objectives? Can I reduce the time it takes for this job to run by loading data a certain way? Can I make a CLI tool that makes creating a new project easier for Data Scientists?
Having these questions at the back of your mind will enable you figure areas that can be improved just by automating things. This mindset will help you go a long way as an MLOps Engineer and can be easily transferred to building intelligent systems in formula 1 cars.