INDY AUTONOMOUS CHALLENGE - driverless racing at Indy

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Live streaming will begin at 1 p.m. (ET) and can be viewed directly from the IAC website (www.indyautonomouschallenge.com)

Nine teams representing 21 global universities will have cars driving around the iconic Indy oval track, with four finalists vying for a $1 million prize offered through a grant from the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc.

Organized by Energy Systems Network and IMS, the goal of the IAC is to advance technology that can speed the commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles and deployments of advanced driver-assistance systems.

Indy Autonomous Challenge To Expand Tech Boundaries Saturday at IMS

The first autonomous race car competition in the 112-year history of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where so much automotive ingenuity has debuted, will be staged Saturday with the Indy Autonomous Challenge Powered by Cisco.

www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com

 

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IAC Competition and University Teams

1 p.m.-4:30 p.m. ET Oct. 23

● Boston Dynamics’ agile mobile robot SPOT to serve as official flag waver

● AI Racing Tech, University of Hawai’i, University of California San Diego

● Autonomous Tiger Racing, Auburn University

● Black & Gold Autonomous Racing, Purdue University, United States Military Academy at West Point, with Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (India), Universidad de San Buenaventura (Colombia)

● Cavalier Autonomous Racing, University of Virginia

● EuroRacing, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), University of Pisa (Italy), ETH Zürich (Switzerland), Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)

● KAIST, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea)

● MIT-PITT-RW, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Waterloo (Canada)

● PoliMOVE, Politecnico di Milano (Italy), University of Alabama

● TUM Autonomous Motorsport, Technische Universität München (Germany)

 

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More info on the Cars (Indy lights platform), teams and rules:
Indy Autonomous Challenge Powered By Cisco

 

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The German team wins $1,000,000.00!

First Place
TUM Autonomous Motorsport - Technische Universität München

Second Place
EURORACING
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) - University of Pisa (UNIPI) - ETH Zürich - Polish Academy of Sciences

Third Place
PoliMOVE - Politecnico di Milano, University of Alabama

First round speeds- one warmup and two timed laps
Car two lap average
5 124.450 mph
3 129.237 mph
4 84.355 mph
9 119.883 mph
? spin - GPS failure
6 131.148 mph
2 loss of steering car auto stopped
? wall contact off turn 4



Top three shootout (4 warmup laps- two timed laps)

5 wall contact front straight, into turn 1 wall
3 135.944 mph
6 139+ lap one, lap two at about 90
(did not program in the additional lap)

 

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Just for reference, during the broadcast they mentioned the cars were setup to have a top speed of about 185 mph.
They used a centrifugal clutch engagement. After a couple of spins on Thursday the cars were given additional rear downforce which may have made them a little slower. It was very cool in Indy yesterday, temps in the mid 50s, so cool that Indy cars probably would not run because of the tire/track temps. The last time the Indy Lights car ran on the oval, the top speed was in the mid 190s.

Some additional info from the local newspaper- Indy Autonomous Challenge tests driverless tech

The University of Virginia, whose car was clocked at 119.883 mph, but then ran an unexplained extra lap forcing judges to toss the time.
The car of AI Racing Tech from Hawaii inadvertently took off into the infield before the entrance of oval Turn 1 and spun through the grass, followed two runs later by the car of MIT, University of Pittsburgh, Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Waterloo suffering a failure while driving down the front-straight and making a hard-left turn into the inside wall.

PoliMOVE was clocked a more than 157 mph during its warmup laps before what the team believed to be a GPS malfunction caused it to brush the wall at the end of the front-straight before it ran straight-on into the Turn 1 wall.

EuroRacing looked as if it was going to prevail with a blistering first lap of 139.009 mph.

In the end, a relatively simple programming issue kept the Italian/Polish/Swiss team from kissing the bricks. It appears the car was set to slow after five laps instead of six, not accounting for the final round’s four warmup laps and two timed ones.