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Indy Autonomous Challenge race at CES pushes limits of autonomous vehicles

Steve Winter

January 8, 2022, 10:07 PM

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Staged on Friday, Jan. 7, the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) was a spirited race between university students who had programmed full-sized autonomous open-wheel race cars. Competing teams arrived in Vegas last weekend and, following a full week of practice at the racetrack, went head-to-head to decide a champion, who would pocket the contest’s top prize of $150,000.

The IAC competition consisted of nine teams from 19 universities in eight nations. Six of those teams worked across international borders to complete their design. ... Each of the nine race teams received an identical vehicle — an IAC Dallara AV-21 — the most technologically advanced, fastest autonomous race car ever assembled.

“There is no hardware advantage,” said University of Virginia Computer Science Professor Madhur Behl, who also served as principal for the Cavalier Autonomous Racing Team. ... “Each car has the same engine, the same tires, the same sensors. The only way you can beat another team is by having better software,” Behl said.

While PoliMOVE, a hybrid team of students from Italy’s Politecnico di Milano and the University of Alabama, took top competition honors, the broad winner may be the future of autonomous driving. ... “The focus of this competition is to develop — alongside all the other teams — the algorithms and research designed to push the limits for autonomous driving,” said Phillip Karle, team leader from TUM Autonomous Motorsport, a collection of 15 Ph.D. students from the Institute of Automotive Technology in Munich, Germany.

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UVA has been part of the IAC competition since 2019, when the team ran a historic race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. ... Echoing Karle’s comments, Behl says it’s not all about winning. ... “If your car is stable and can effectively navigate around another car at more than 100 miles-per-hour, then there’s a chance that some of this technology will eventually get transferred to regular self-driving cars and improve their overall safety as well.”

Steve Winter and Kenny Fried are WTOP contributors who work for Brotman | Winter | Fried, a division of Sage Communications.

No driver, no problem: Self-driving cars race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

by Kyle Wilcox Friday, January 7th 2022

{snip video, but it is not of the race in progress}

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — History was made at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday, as autonomous race cars took to the track as part of CES.

They’re not as loud as a NASCAR, but these self-driving cars are fast.

They can go over 130 miles per hour.

A first-of-its-kind challenge at the speedway called the Indy Autonomous Challenge featuring 9 teams made up of students from 19 universities from 8 countries.

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