SPEEDWAY, Ind. -- The Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosted 10 teams Friday for the Indy Autonomous Challenge.
The international competition began at IMS back in October 2021.
The first two cars in the time trials represented Indiana colleges, #2 Purdue AI Racing and #10 IU Luddy.
Both teams anxiously awaited the drop of the green flag in their garages, making the final adjustments to their software.
“I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana,” said Ethan Brown, one of the team members for Purdue. “Obviously, there’s a little bit of rivalry there.”
Once the cars are pushed out of the garage and onto the track, it’s all hands-free.
The goal is to reach the fastest speed with five minutes on the track, all using coding for the self-driving cars.
“Indy Autonomous Challenge is essentially a STEM club on steroids, right?,” said Paul Mitchell, the president and chairman of IAC. "There is no human interaction with the car. The car has to make all its decisions on its own using AI driving algorithms.”
IU Luddy was first out of the pit, reaching nearly 125 miles per hour in the best lap.
Directly followed by Purdue AI Racing, as they sat and waited for their turn.
“The worst thing that can happen is we hit the button and something goes wrong,” said Brown. "We have to debug it really quickly, figure out why we can't talk to a certain sensor and reset it and make sure we can fix it in time, under the race pressure.”
Purdue’s car ran four laps on its own, reaching nearly 140 miles per hour for their team trial, with eight cars to follow after them.
“Those teams that qualify will do a head-to-head racing competition where we put two cars out at the same time,” said Mitchell.
“They essentially keep passing each other like a game of cat and mouse until one of them has to give up, or they or they have an accident.”
The team that ended up on top in the passing competition was #5 PoliMOVE-MSU at the 160 miles per hour increment.
The time trial winner was #9 Cavalier Autonomous Racing from the University of Virginia at 171 miles per hour.