Nine university teams will compete for a $1 million prize at the iconic Brickyard this weekend as the Indy Autonomous Challenge comes to a conclusion.
Organizers bill the competition as a way to help speed the development of fully autonomous vehicles to market. While the modified Indy Light race cars won’t have to cope with traffic, pedestrians and bicyclists, they will be battling for dominance on one of the most famous tracks in the world. To qualify, each vehicle needs to top 120 mph and some have already hit speeds of more than 170 mph.
While that won’t come close to the speeds achieved during the Indianapolis 500 — which topped 220 mph during qualifying for this year’s race — it takes to the extreme the ability to keep robotized vehicles out of harm’s way.
As with human-powered race cars, the Indy Autonomous Challenge, or IAC, is expected to see the robot racers passing and drafting in a battle to the finish.
Impressive, but not a first
This isn’t the first time autonomous vehicles have faced off on track. The roborace launched its first season of six races back in 2019. One of the robocars established a new world record topping out at 176 mph. The series was closed to the public for safety reasons, each event instead Livestreamed over the Internet.
The IAC will be open to spectators, though they must provide proof of having been vaccinated for COVID-19 before entering the track.
In all, nine different vehicles will take to the tarmac on Oct. 21 for the first of two days of qualifying. The actual race will be held on Saturday, Oct. 23. The teams represent 21 different universities from nine countries, including the U.S., Canada, Germany, Italy and South Korea.
Same starting point
All of the robot racers are modified versions of the AV-21, the standard Indy Light race car, produced by Dallara. It’s been the sole vehicle supplier for the conventional Indy Light series since 2001.
Each car has been outfitted with a variety of sensors, similar to those being used in the driverless prototypes just beginning to be tested on public roads by Google’s Waymo spinoff and General Motors’ Cruise subsidiary.
These include radar, cameras and lidar, the latter a laser-based system that provides a detailed, 3D map of what’s happening all around a vehicle. The data gathered by those sensors will be “fused” using open source software. Organizers, which include the Indy Speedway and Energy Systems Network, say they hope the race will help speed up the development both fully autonomous vehicles, as well as the advanced driver assistance systems now becoming commonplace on today’s retail automobiles.
