Indy Autonomous Challenge race at CES pushes limits of autonomous vehicles
"UVA has been part of this competition since the beginning of 2019. In October last year we held the first part of this competition, a historic race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. "
Paul Mitchell, President and CEO of Energy Systems Network. (Photo Steve Winter and Kenny Fried)
Kenny Fried
Teams conduct practice runs on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (Photo Steve Winter and Kenny Fried)
Gary Nastase
PoliMOVE, a hybrid team of students from the Italian Politecnico di Milano and the University of Alabama, has received top awards in competitions. (Photo Steve Winter and Kenny Fried)
Gary Nastase
IAC booth in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. (Photo Steve Winter and Kenny Fried)
Kenny Fried
For CES, the most exciting vehicle-based activity was 15 miles north of the Strip at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (Photo Steve Winter and Kenny Fried)
Kenny Fried
Automotive engineering has grown so much in recent years that the CES Auto Show in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center has been recognized as one of the largest auto shows in the world.
At a recent celebration of technological innovation, attendees saw visionary new features such as BMW iX Flow with color change, Cadillac's InnerSpace drive-in cinema (when self-driving cars become a reality), LG's Omnipod “Office in a Car” and more.
But while these marvels caught the attention and amazement of those in attendance, the most exciting vehicle-based activity took place 15 miles north of the Strip at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) took place on Friday, January 7th, and was a spirited race between university students who programmed full-size, open-wheel, autonomous racing cars. The competing teams arrived in Vegas last weekend and, after a full week of training on the racetrack, went head-to-head to determine a champion who would pocket the grand prize of $ 150,000.
The IAC competition consisted of nine teams from 19 universities in eight nations. Six of these teams worked across international borders to complete their design.
Each of the nine racing teams received an identical vehicle - an IAC Dallara AV-21 - the most technologically advanced and fastest autonomous racing car ever built.
"There's no hardware benefit," said Madhur Behl, a professor of computer science at the University of Virginia who also served as director of the Cavalier Autonomous Racing Team.
“Every car has the same engine, the same tires, the same sensors. The only way to beat another team is with better software, ”said Behl.
While PoliMOVE, a hybrid team of students from Italy's Politecnico di Milano and the University of Alabama, won top prizes in competitions, the big winner could be the future of autonomous driving.
"The focus of this competition is on working with all other teams to develop the algorithms and research to push the boundaries of autonomous driving," said Phillip Karle, team leader at TUM Autonomous Motorsport, a collection of 15 Ph.D. Students at the Institute for Automotive Technology in Munich.
Karle said his team was "supported by the university, but also by partners from industry".
Karle also recognized "PhD students, undergraduate students, and our team members who all worked together to develop the software needed to drive the vehicles."
While participants in the event on Friday might have expected to see nine cars on the racetrack, they actually saw two cars racing head to head, trying to overtake and maneuver, and trying to get to the finish line first on the track to advance to the next round.
But if you were expecting a team of students to control their vehicles through a radio controlled interface, think again.
The moment these vehicles hit the track, they were completely self-contained - completely autonomous - which means the racing cars made their own AI-based decisions about when to accelerate, when to slow down, when to maneuver, and when to overtake have to.
"This is really a temporary competition where we have two cars on the track at the same time and we are driving past each other at ever faster speeds," said Paul Mitchell, president and CEO of Energy Systems Network, the company that produced the IAC.
This is important, Mitchell said, because high-speed autonomous vehicles that run different algorithms have never influenced each other and make decisions the way human drivers do.
"It is absolutely critical that we move forward with high-speed automation because if we ever have truly autonomous vehicles that meet on the freeway at a speed of 70, 80 mph, we need to know that it can be safely done," said Mitchell
"To address this issue, we launched this price competition, which aims to attract the best and brightest minds to work on high-speed automation."
According to Mitchell, the Las Vegas Indy Autonomous Challenge was the culmination of a three-year journey. The idea came about after the effects of the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005, which essentially established today's autonomous vehicle industry.
"We saw that while the industry is advancing the state of the art in low-speed automation in urban and suburban environments, really not enough work has been done on high-speed automation," said Mitchell. "And that's what the IAC is all about."
The IAC program is also all about building the industry.
As part of the week's activities, Karles TUM Autonomous Motorsport - the runner-up in the PoliMOVE competition - announced the launch of a new Autonomy Platform company called Driveblocks, which aims to offer a modular, scalable, robust and safe platform for fully autonomous vehicles.
Driveblocks will initially target the commercial vehicle sector and offer a complete solution for fleet automation. They hope to serve customers in many fields including mining, agriculture, warehouse logistics, and more.
“The whole idea here is to push the boundaries between robotics and artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. We do this by showing how stable our cars are, so that they can really drive safely at 250 km / h, ”said Behl.
UVA has been part of the IAC competition since 2019 when the team hosted a historic race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Following Karle, Behl says that it's not just about winning.
“If your car is stable and can effectively navigate around another car at more than 160 miles per hour, the chances are that some of this technology will eventually carry over to regular self-driving cars and also improve their overall safety. ”
Steve Winter and Kenny Fried are WTOP employees who work for Brotman | Winter | Fried, a division of Sage Communications.
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