Hello, it’s back to your regularly scheduled rolls reporter this week! Thanks much to James for filling in in my absence. Many happenings this weekend, including a single day of rolls due to not having quorum on November 1st. We saw buggies in Halloween costumes, successful and aborted pass tests, and teams doing Hill 1s to get ready for Mini-Raceday next week. I hope to see you there! Message us if you are coming and can help us time the teams, or just come for the action (and donuts).
Someone missed sweeping up this Redbull can in the chute
After a nice couple weekends off for Fall Break, we’re back into the swing with rolls. Dan was out again this week running a marathon, but I found a way to sneak in some training for the BAA vs Sweepstakes exhibition as well (read to the end to find out how!). We had a whopping 8 teams making an appearance this weekend, with some clearly putting in the reps in advance of Mini Raceday.
This year, Mini Raceday coincides with Homecoming (Nov 8/9)! We rely on volunteers to help make it happen — if you’re interested in pitching in, you can read more here!
We’ve definitely crossed the threshold from the warmer mornings of the first half of the semester into the colder months and teams are bundling up. Now so can you, repping a new BAA crewneck! Warm, stylish, and available in 2 colors!
Fresh faces on the course! While the bulk of the rolls so far have been dominated by the independents, we saw PiKA, SigEp, and DG all out this weekend.
With many teams racking up rolls, some buggies are donning the trash bags once again — for pass tests in the fall! Sweeps is working on a new format for Mini Raceday featuring some heat-style races, necessitating teams to get their pass tests in before Homecoming.
Heavier jackets, hats, and blankets are making their appearance
Team Observations
Apex — A couple of their buggies seemed to be dressed up — they had some paper “costumes” on the back of Solaris and Molotov, but we’ll see if they come back with something more substantial for next weekend. On Sunday, we saw Scorch back on the course, but it seems like there may be some trouble getting it all the way around the hills. It was moving quite slowly through the freeroll and throughout the day, Apex chose to unload their driver at the bottom of Hill 3.
Molotov on the back hills — with a Solaris(?) costume
CIA — Fringe alumni attempts to steal Goldfinch off the course! With SigEp mixing in with CIA to get more rolls, there was some confusion during a pass test to get CIA pushers on the back hills, resulting in a local alum doing a Goldfinch 3-4. Other than that, CIA had an uneventful weekend.
Roadrunner by chute flag
DG — It was great seeing our only sorority back on the course. They brought Insite out for this weekend, although the rumor on the street is that their first build is still in progress. They brought plenty of energy on Saturday, with lots of cheers for their pushers from the follow car.
Insite on Hill 3
Fringe — Fringe kicked things off with our first pass test of the season this year. Despite being a bit shorthanded on pushers, they continued to rack up clean rolls across their fleet this weekend.
Guest pusher Sam Green with Blackbird on Hill 5
PiKA — Although they were only out on Saturday, they still got a good chunk of rolls in, leading the Greek orgs in total rolls. Raptor continues to carry its speed well through the freeroll. They were also able to execute on a pass test, partnering with SDC.
Raptor in the freeroll
SDC — SDC had another tough weekend. In the first roll Saturday morning, Avarice went wide in the chute, hitting the outer bales. Sweeps was able to clear the accident relatively quickly, getting the driver checked by EMS and the buggy off the road in around 10 minutes. The driver is ok, though we don’t know how much damage Avarice sustained in the crash.
Paranoia’s pushers seem to have sprouted wings
SigEp — SigEp also had their first appearance at rolls this semester, bringing out Barracuda. As mentioned earlier, they were able to double up on rolls with CIA to get their pass test in by the end of their first weekend. They put up a solid performance, showing good speed out of the gate.
Barracuda returns to the course
Spirit — Spirit had some really strong rolls this weekend, right alongside some weaker ones. In one roll, Inviscid rolled almost to Hill 4, clearly burning their Hill 3 pusher, only to later in the day take a big slide, putting them only inches away from the outer bales. From what I saw Sunday, they were rolling a bit more consistently — maybe they just needed a bit more time to warm up after Fall Break.
Kingpin entering the freeroll
Bonus Pre-Halloween Special Feature
While we’re hoping to have more teams out with costumes next weekend, some folks were already getting in the spirit. Here’s a couple photos of our favorites so far.
Tony the Tiger in follow car
Avarice as a butterfly
Local Fringe alumni as cryptid / CIA pusher
As always, if you would like to help contribute notes or photos/video for these rolls reports, you can sign up to help here or reach out to Dan.
If you have additional notes or corrections, feel free to reach out to myself (@jamestwong on Discord / jameswong@cmubuggy.org) or Dan (@.dbec on Discord / danbecerra@cmubuggy.org).
Thanks to Jazz and Guillermo for their contributions this week!
Hello, alumni! Homecoming’s best event, Mini-Raceday, is coming up quickly– November 8 and 9, to be exact. We need volunteers to help with timing buggies, and possibly with some sort of broadcast or recording effort. If you’re interested in helping, please sign up here: cmubuggy.org/volunteer
To better serve the Buggy community, we will be keeping the Buggy Enhancement Grant application open all semester. Half of the remaining unallocated funds from the grant pool will be available on a first-come-first-served basis.
After you submit your application, expect an email from the committee the following week with questions and concerns that they would like to see addressed. Once you have responded to the committee’s feedback, we’ll hold the final vote on your grant proposal.
Happy October, James here! With the start of spooky season, Dan is off in the woods, so I will be guest writing (ghost writing? 👻) this weekend’s rolls report. We got a few more spectators this weekend than normal, with visiting families around the course. CMU has finally moved Family Weekend to not conflict with Fall Break. On that note, there are not rolls scheduled the next 2 weekends (10/11 – 10/19) with the next possible rolls on 10/25 due to Fall Break.
We have an exciting update on the Buggy Enhancement Grant drone project. This week was our first test of automatically generating composite images of the driver’s line for every buggy for a full day of rolls. This system enables quick turnaround for driver’s to analyze their line and make incremental improvements as they work up to raceday speed. The original drone footage gives an incomparable view of the speed and handling of the buggy as the driver navigates through the chute, and the composite images highlight minute differences in the geometry of the turn.
This is a multidisciplinary multi-organization project led by Tjaden “TJ” Bridges of SDC, and received funding as part of the spring 2024 Buggy Enhancement Grant campaign. It truly captures the spirit of the Buggy Enhancement Grant program by making the sport faster, safer, and more enjoyable for everyone.
The footage and images are tools for you to make your team safer and faster. They are not a substitute for caution and good judgement in how the drivers, mechanics, and pushers plan how to safely get the team up to speed.
Behind the Scenes
On the Ground
The biggest challenge for this project came from the logistics of getting permission from everyone to have the drone in the air during their rolls and ensuring all of the equipment is prepped and ready for every day of rolls.
In the Air
Wind conditions permitting, we record from 50 meters above the northwest corner of Schenley Drive and Frew Street with the camera is tilted down at 55 degrees. We try to keep a few meters leading up to the chute flag in view so drivers have good feedback on the timing of when they should start the turn.
On the Web
The image compositing is done with an OpenCV Python script. A background subtractor generates an on the fly model of the road and highlights differences between frames. A blob detector then identifies candidate moving objects in each frame, and a set of Kalman filters track the trajectories between frames. This allows us to filter out small motion and slow moving objects, but the occasional goose in flight still gets its own line photo. The relevant frames are all aligned to the first frame for each buggy, and the tracking data gives us a mask to efficiently apply a bit of math to the pixel values that selectively lightens or darkens the composite image. Labeling the images with the org/buggy is still a manual process, but we’re working on training an image classifier to auto tag the images.
It was Great Race Weekend in Pittsburgh, which means no permits for Sunday Rolls. In past years that meant cancelling the full weekend, but this crew didn’t let that stop them; they still rolled on Saturday morning. This was a very efficient day of rolls, with almost no incidents to speak of. The teams got a lot of practice and another returning organization made their season debut, read on!
I am overjoyed to announce that 100% of the grant applications we received for the Fall 2025 grant campaign have been funded! Thank you to all of our applicants for taking time to assemble such strong applications!
Caroline Kiesnowski received funding to install an electrical hookup for the shared mill that resides between the Fringe and Apex shops.
Adithi Phadke received funding to build RTK data loggers for SPIRIT Racing Systems.
Frank Robb received funding to purchase FIA impact data recorders for potentially the entire fleet of rolling buggies. The grant funds hardware for any rolling buggy, so please reach out if you are interested in collecting this data for your team.
Wade Gordon received funding to purchase software and equipment to facilitate getting real time footage from a drone to the broadcast truck.
Another weekend of beautiful weather for buggy! We had two smooth days of rolls with only a few incidents, and all were just the type of actions you would expect to see as new drivers start gaining speed. We saw the same 6 orgs out again this weekend, we hope to see a few more returning teams back soon, read on for more details!
Roadrunner rolling out, one of 5 CIA buggies from this weekend
Welcome to Sweepstakes 2026! Dan Becerra, your duly elected rolls reporter, back for another year where I will do my best to report on the teams, the incidents, and the storylines leading up to Raceday (April 9 & 10!). This is the earliest calendar date for rolls since the BAA has kept records of this (back to at least 2008). Kudos to the five large independent orgs and Robobuggy making a quorum for this early first weekend. Read on to see which buggies came out this year including at least one not seen for a while!
Blue skies, empty lawns, and a group of people staring at one very specific patch of road – it’s buggy season!
