Page 31 - EE Times Europe Magazine – June 2024

EE|Times EUROPE 31

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Racing on Algorithms

By Rebecca Pool

Meet the motorsport where autonomous
tech and unmanned excitement converge
on the circuit, delivering speeds to
180 mph and side-by-side thrills.

ormula 1 fans are accustomed to watching two cars race
wheel-to-wheel at breakneck speed, but when the Indy
Autonomous Challenge (IAC) driverless race car competition Guided by sensors, cameras and software, the AV-21 autonomous
F delivered the same experience in Las Vegas earlier this year, the race car brought revolution to the racetrack.
cars’ skilled maneuvers took even the race’s organizers by surprise. (Source: Indy Autonomous Challenge)
Without human intervention, a pair of Dallara-built Indy Lights race
cars, filled with processors and sensors controlled via autonomous soft- AI modules, to pilot the race car. Barring their software, the cars are
ware, sped around turns, getting as close as 1.5 meters from each other exactly the same—so, put simply, the best “AI driver” wins.
before one overtook the other at some 135 mph. Simon Hoffmann heads up TUM Autonomous Motorsport, the
IAC chief executive Paul Mitchell was thrilled. “Historically, our Technical University of Munich team, which developed the software
passes have involved a car moving out to overtake, passing and then for the defending car that took part in the remarkable wheel-to-wheel
immediately pulling back in,” he said. “But here the car [from Korea overtake in Las Vegas and went on to win the IAC, held during CES
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology] started to overtake, 2024. “It was pretty nice to watch our software do this [maneuver],
‘realized’ it was in a turn [and] decided to wait until it was out of that but the entire race was interesting, as there was a lot of interaction
turn to finish the overtake. between cars,” he said. “As well as that long overtake, the cars tried sev-
“We didn’t plan that, the teams didn’t plan that—it was the car’s eral times to get into a gap. That gap would then close and the overtake
reaction. This was a first for high-speed autonomous racing,” Mitchell would be aborted, so the car would try it on the other side. We got some
said. really nice data from all of this.”
Since 2021, the Indy Autonomous Challenge has attracted univer- And data—at least for the competitors—is largely what the IAC is
sity software developer teams from around the world to compete in about. While the races have drawn huge numbers of spectators, with
fastest-lap, obstacle avoidance and head-to-head races. Each team has winning teams bagging US$1 million prizes, the IAC maintains the
worked with the IAC’s Dallara AV-21 rear-wheel drive, one-seater race Challenge is first and foremost an applied research program to advance
car, equipped with six mono cameras, four radars, three LiDARs and autonomous vehicle technology, show what it can do at extreme speeds
GPS. Researchers develop the autonomous software stack, including and drive commercialization of fully autonomous urban transport.
localization, object tracking, prediction and control software, alongside “We are not, and never will be, a motorsports racing series; we’re not

Indy Autonomous Challenge teams in 2021. This year, the challenge involved nine teams representing 20 universities from around the
world. (Source: Indy Autonomous Challenge)

www.eetimes.eu | JUNE 2024