Universities Will Race Autonomous Cars Around Indianapolis Motor Speedway This Week

The Indy Autonomous Challenge will feature nine modified Indy Lights cars on the oval.

ByRyan Erik King
An hour ago

The two-year long competition will reach its ultimate crescendo this week in Speedway, Indiana as nine university teams prepare to race autonomous cars for $1 million at the iconic Brickyard. The final two rounds of the Indy Autonomous Challenge are scheduled to take place at Indianapolis Motor Speedway over the course of this week.

The first two rounds of the software-focused autonomous vehicle competition centered around each entrant team formally launching its IAC project and demonstrating its ability to automate a passenger vehicle. The first two rounds took place in early 2020. The third round saw each team prove its capability of competently and safely operating an automated Dallara IL-15, a modified version of the same car used in Indy Lights. Indy Lights is a racing championship meant to prepare drivers for the IndyCar Series and the Indianapolis 500, IndyCar’s marquee event. In February 2021, the third round took place on a competition-supplied simulation that recreated the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the automated Dallara IL-15, a virtual environment to pit the teams against each other in a format matching the upcoming fourth and fifth rounds.

Last week, the Indy Autonomous Challenge announced the nine teams that advanced past the third round and will participate in the final two rounds this week at the Speedway. These teams represent 21 universities from 9 different countries

The Finalists:
• 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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Cavalier Autonomous Racing
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, USA.
Team principal: Prof. Madhur Behl (madhur.behl@virginia.edu)

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Pioneers in Autonomous Racing
July 27, 2020

UVA to Compete in Inaugural Indy Autonomous Challenge
By Audra Book
abook@virginia.edu

The University of Virginia’s first student autonomous racing club will be a pioneer in another way: The students and their faculty advisor, Madhur Behl, will compete against 30 other university clubs next winter at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the inaugural Indy Autonomous Challenge, with a $1 million prize for the winner.

Behl, an assistant professor with joint appointments in UVA Engineering’s Department of Computer Science and Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, was recently awarded a $50,000 grant from the Jefferson Trust to mentor students in the CAVALIER AUTONOMOUS RACING CLUB.

The club will offer students from across Grounds the opportunity to collaborate in real-world experiences like the ones Behl offers in his F/10 Autonomous Racing course. With his guidance, the club will build and race a fully autonomous electric go-kart, in addition to its work on an Indy light autonomous car.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: UVA AMONG WORLDWIDE UNIVERSITIES TO COMPETE IN THE INDY AUTONOMOUS CHALLENGE



Madhur Behl, assistant professor of computer science and engineering systems and environment at the University of Virginia School of Engineering, will mentor the Cavalier Autonomous Racing Club at UVA. Funded through a Jefferson Trust Grant, Behl and UVA students are teaming up to race a self-driving vehicle at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Mentoring the Cavalier Autonomous Racing Club students is a logical new undertaking for Behl, who refers to robotics as “his craft.” He cannot remember a time when he was bored with building robots and autonomous systems.

Behl received awards for excellence in robotics and led the robotics club while earning his bachelor’s in electronics and electrical communications engineering from Punjab Engineering College in India. He went on to receive his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where he expanded his research in autonomous systems. While at Penn, he won the World Embedded Software Challenge and the Richard K. Dentel Memorial Prize for research and excellence in urban transportation.

In 2015, he co-founded the F1/10 INTERNATIONAL AUTONOMOUS RACING COMPETITIONS, for which he still serves as race director.

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