Formula Student Driverless (FSD) is a competition where student teams compete to build an autonomous racecar. The main dynamic event in FSD is trackdrive, where the racecar traverses an unknown track with lanes demarcated by cones. One major challenge of the event is to determine the boundaries of the lane from cones perceived online despite false positive cone detections and sharp turns. We present a binary integer optimization to address this problem by leveraging a priori knowledge from competition rules on parameters such as average cone spacings and minimum track width. In this paper, we describe our approach, and analyze its latency, accuracy, and robustness to false positive cone detections. This approach is used on-board to solve the lane detection problem during the competition in real-time.

The ability of cells to sense and respond to their environment is encoded in biomolecular reaction networks, in which information travels through processes such as production, modification, and removal of biomolecules. Recent advances in biotechnology have made it possible to reengineer these physical processes to the point where synthetic biomolecular circuits can be inserted into cells to program cell behavior for useful functionalities. These circuits are often designed in a bottom-up fashion with smaller components connected to form complex systems. In a bottom-up approach to design, it is highly desirable that circuit components behave modularly, that is, the input-output behavior of a module characterized in isolation remains unchanged when the context changes. Unfortunately, due to the physical processes by which information is communicated from one biomolecular circuit module to the other, the lack of modularity is often a problem. In fact, the input-output behavior of a module depends on both direct connectivity to other modules, due to loading effects, and indirect connectivity arising from loads applied to shared cellular resources. In this paper, we summarize the published work illustrating how the means of molecular communication lead to these problems. Specifically, we review the concept of retroactivity, which has been proposed to capture loading problems within a “signals and systems” framework, allowing for engineering solutions that restore modularity.