Alternative Energy Systems Society

Our society, which was founded in 2004 as "Solar Energy Systems (GESK)", was revised in 2010 and took the name AESK and continued its activities in a more institutional and wider range.

In the 21st century, where energy consumption is at the highest level and the need for alternative energies is felt intensely, Yildiz Technical University "Alternative Energy Systems Society (AESK)" students carry out projects and studies that will contribute to bringing nature-friendly

green energies into our daily lives.

Our society, which has the mission of being the pillar of our university on the tracks and in the skies, aims to highlight Yildiz's "technical" dimension everywhere with the projects it carries out and the products it produces.

Our vision is to be a community that contributes to establishing student university- industry cooperation that best represents the Republic of Turkey on the international platform.

Our club consists of six main teams: Electrical, Mechanical, Composite, Autonomous, UAV, and Organization teams.

1-) Electrical Department

As the electrical team within the Alternative Energy Systems Club, we are preparing for competitions such as the TEKNOFEST Robotaxi-Passenger Autonomous Vehicle Competition organized by the T3 Foundation and the Ministry of Industry and Technology, the Efficiency Challenge Electric Vehicle Races organized by TÜBİTAK, and the Shell Eco-Marathon competitions held in Europe, America, and Asia.

We produce all electrical components of our autonomous, electric, and hydrogen-powered vehicles, as well as our Shell electric vehicle, 100% locally. These components include battery management system cards, energy management system cards, onboard charging units, motors, motor drivers, and fuel cell control units. Hardware card designs, embedded system software, and motor design of these units are carried out under the electrical department. Additionally, these systems are renewed and revised every year through research and development activities.

2-) Mechanical Department

Our mechanical team designs all mechanical parts on the vehicle and carries out the necessary tests on the operation of these parts. In addition, all assembly of these systems, production of some parts, necessary calculations and analyzes are carried out by our team.

The designed parts are sent to the production stage with the support of our sponsors and our society’s own resources. In accordance with the mission and vision of our club, we take great care to ensure that all parts we use in our vehicles are our own design and production.

We use our own designs when producing all parts of the steering system, suspension system, braking system, chassis and outer shell of the vehicle, except springs and calipers.

3-) Autonomous Driving Department

Autonomous vehicles are self-driving vehicles that perceive the vehicle's environment and move without any human intervention. Our team, which has developed a prototype autonomous vehicle, has 6 departments: object detection, lane detection, road planning, mapping and localization, sensor fusion and control. Innovative and state-of-the-art algorithms are developed by our team in each department, in parallel with the industry. Supported by artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms, our vehicle can move completely autonomously by sensing its environment with its camera, LiDAR, GPS and IMU sensors.

Until 2018, our team participated in the Robotaxi-Passenger Autonomous Vehicle Competition, held every year within the scope of Teknofest, and achieved three first places and one second place, becoming one of the most popular teams in the competition.

Our team continues to work with great motivation and continues to work to achieve success in domestic and international competitions with our goals growing every year.

4-) Composite Department

Our composite team produces our vehicles from the chassis to the frame using methods such as hand lay-up and vacuum infusion, which are the main production methods. We use composite structures such as carbonfiber-epoxy, glass fiber-polyester in the production of our vehicles. We not only produce with the materials we use, but also carry out R&D studies to improve ourselves every day.

We carry out strength tests to measure the durability of the parts we produce. Apart from vehicle production, we also produce the drone chassis of our newly established UAV team by hand-laying method by reinforcing carbon fiber with aluminum. We not only produce composites, but also help our new members learn the tricks of physical work such as literature review, sanding, painting and polishing.

5-) UAV Department

As the UAV team, we participate in the TEKNOFEST competition, Rotary Wing UAV and Swarm Robots competitions, organized by the T3 Foundation and the Ministry of Industry and Technology, which are held every year in our country. In the first year we participated in the TEKNOFEST 2022 Swarm Robots competition, it produced the most original algorithms, collected the highest score and came first. We plan to participate in the TEKNOFEST 2023 Fighter UAV competition this year, relying on our successes and R&D studies in this field.

We will continue our success and continue our culture of aiming for first place in every competition we participate in and always prioritizing localism while doing this. The degrees, successes and awards we have received in these competitions over the years are obvious, and we will continue our efforts in the same way to add new ones. We will continue our efforts to be the best in every competition we participate in.

We have achieved numerous successes since 2004. Some of our recent notable achievements include:

2023 International Efficiency Challenge Electric Vehicle 1st place

2023 International Efficiency Challenge Locality Award

2023 Robotaxi Passenger Autonomous Vehicle 1st place

2023 Shell Eco-Marathon Autonomous Urban Concept 5th place

2023 Shell Eco-Marathon Mileage Concept Europe and Africa 7th place

2022 Hydrogen-Powered Vehicle Locality Award

2022 Electric Vehicle Locality Award

2022 Autonomous Robots Turkey Championship

2021 Autonomous Robotaxi Turkey Championship

2021 Hydrogen-Powered Vehicle Turkey Championship

2021 Efficiency Challenge Locality Award

2021 UAV Locality Award

As we mentioned above, we are aware that we need to work harder in order to maintain these successes and improve further. We know that we need to use quality and effective technology along with these studies. For this reason, we think that a sponsorship agreement with a company that produces quality PCBs like PCBWAY is very important for us. We are excited for the days to come.