well from an all-electric car fleet to robots in the metaverse innovation and mobility surely
dominated sieges at ces in 2022 in las vegas but it was in fact the racetrack that created more
buzz than anywhere else along the strip ready for some high-speed autonomous racing action
well brace yourselves for this indie autonomous challenge from the las vegas motor speedway
las vegas the glitz glamour and the bright lights that define the world famous entertainment capital
of the world are now back despite the impact of kova 19 and the sudden surge of the omicron
variant the annual consumer electronics show in las vegas did not disappoint always sure to
showcase to the world the latest and greatest in innovative new products and technologies as
it has for the last 55 years and gentlemen start your software and with those history-making words
the world's first ever head-to-head race for autonomous race cars gets booted up at the
las vegas motor speedway the india autonomous challenge is a competition among top research
universities from around the world including from korea from germany from italy and from the united
states who are developing software that can control fully autonomous race cars and compete
in head-to-head races at tracks like this at the las vegas motor speedway the way they work on the
cars is they connect them to their computers and they check data they make updates to the software
on the car they make adjustments then they come out and and begin practicing and we practice
all day cars will go out and do single car runs but also now we'll actually have two
cars passing each other on the track at the same time at speeds that will blow your mind away
just three days remaining until the india autonomous challenge at ces finals we hit
the tracks of las vegas motor speedway to meet the teams in their last stretch of preparations
hi professor shim how are you good you just came on the right spot right time meet team heist from
david hunter shim's unmanned systems research group the smallest team in terms of manpower with
one phd student calvin chanyang zhang as team lead one master's student andrea finazzi from
milan working with their advisor professor david shim but don't let the size of their team fool you
so the kais team is is really strong and while they don't have as many team members as some
of our other teams they're extremely committed they have been here in las vegas that team i
think since the end of november and haven't left actually yesterday was a big day for our team
we achieved like 140 miles per hour sorry we are going right now okay oh wonderful you just came in
perfect time perfect in general the teams involved have opted to focus in collaboration over
competition pairing up with teams that are close to the same level together creating strategies
along the way to be equally successful as they move into passing competition for team heist
it's been midpit a group of engineers from mit university of pittsburgh rochester institute of
technology and the university of waterloo in canada but high-speed autonomous racing isn't
just about software driver it's also about a very significant systems integration challenge
and then we was pretty good and then also they were pretty good but there is a space
drive who which controls the steering command and the brake pressure the computer is just
gone so they lock the tire immediately so it means that the computer is shut down
keeping everything under control can be a mighty challenging task at speeds of 130 140 miles per
hour the central computer could crash or a chip could stop functioning the india tunnels challenge
traces his oranges back to over two years ago in 2019 david my advisor and i were invited by the
indie autumn challenge organizer to the workshop so that we can make the rules or we can give them
a feedback about like a competition when we had our prize development workshop in may of 2019
calvin came with david and so i was able to meet calvin then calvin came to las vegas
um you know when we announced the competition he has ultra high standards he's a perfectionist
he's a fierce competitor that's matt peake from july 2018 to october last year
he was directly involved in the india autonomous challenge from
figuring out how to construct an autonomous car competition with the indianapolis motor speedway
one of the tasks that i undertook was identifying all of our prospective competitors david at kaist
very quickly rose to the top of the list he was working with one of the oems i believe it was
hyundai and that he had you know ultra high speed experience that he had done if i recall correctly
somewhere in the neighborhood of 95 miles per hour you know around a race track their
conversation stretched from late summer of 2018 and into winter and spring of 2019. little did
they know of the massive challenges ahead or the remarkable achievements to be made along the way
the car was not fully race ready when we got the car but we have only two months until the race so
among the team leaders we decide okay let's make a collaboration group up to
the basic software stack such as sensor driver or firing the engine or just move the car when
we give them a control command so that we can make this challenge happen within a timeline
all the different teams has a different role in collaborative effort in our case we take
in charge of designing this camera driver like streaming the image from the camera and the other
teams are in charge of making the gps working fine the other teams are doing the lidar stuff
tim autonomous motorsport from the technical university of munich in germany is the
defending champion from the time trial race in indianapolis last october we are 15 phd students
but we are supported by many many undergraduates and graduate students in total we are around
60 people that were part of the project most of us have been working on the project for
two years now but there was a prior project to this it was called rubber race and other
phd students in our team they worked on this project for four years now
we pull up to the track near sunset in the evening before the final race the air around team kaist
had been extra tense all day so today is the last day of qualifications for the autonomous
challenge at ces meaning that this is the last chance the teams can show that they can actually
do head-to-head autonomous passing and uh we just had uh the team from kaist from korea successfully
passed at 80 miles an hour and so they can be in the competition tomorrow so they're very excited
out of the nine teams that are competing so far only five teams qualified for the final day
we are working very closely with the mit and then the pit team there is a mid-pit team
but so they had a crash on this morning so all teams should pair the partner to demonstrate their
uh overtaking performance and our performance our partner was a midpity and then they had a
crash and then we lost our partner to demonstrate so we are rating them and then every schedule
is postponed and then delayed so we are just waiting for our and then we are trying to looking
for our partner and then that's our original plan and then is it like totally destroyed and you know
like we just go with the hawaii hawaii team 30 minutes before the end of the day track and we
try to qualify and then eventually we did now i'm the happiest man in this planet
halfway across on the front stretch of the track
there's another happiest man on this planet this evening
we qualified the last minute so what does it mean for you so um well we can compete for tomorrow
that's technically that's what it is and uh well we don't want to go
just like that right it's very disappointing and uh and then we show that it is possible
that we can do this in asia in korea we don't even have a good decent razor track
but whatever we want to do it we can do it you know here we have a very team great team
and the european teams are really strong they are already in the practice they show that 240
50 kilometers per hour so we may not be able to do that but uh by walking down this path when we
get better when we then we'll win and that'll be the day it'll be all making this worthwhile
back at the racing track on the final day of the india thomas challenge at
ces so what was the first round uh we were doing fine we passed the auburn
their fifths now and they had a car problem so they stopped every cars including ours but we
didn't have any problems so so our cars back on track right this is running as you speak
and uh so the other contender will coming in either this guy or that guy they're very uh but
and it was indeed team heist coming out with flying colors for the finals
kaist which advanced by virtue of beating auburn just a little while
ago we'll be facing off against the top seed in poly move this is a huge challenge here
for this kais team that was just scrapping and clawing to have
a piece of software effectively ready to go to be able to compete today
here comes pike heist picking up speed taking a peek to the outside and will complete the pass
before turns one and two so we are set to move on i heard andrea in the radio saying
okay this is gonna be okay for guys uh we are happy with our result we're gonna stop here
i asked calvin why he decided to retire at that point why not push further
in my point of view i mean like we are an engineer so every system should be under our control right
but there is no reason why we have we are not a gambler so i know that this our system is can go
faster up to 150 but like somehow with some let me see some false positives so it's definitely
not a safe symptom so yeah i i can i can stop the car you know i am sitting here so i can
always stop the car and his teammate andrea so to operate the car especially at high speed
we need both of us being on the same page all the time
we need to and the communication between us is crucial to get the car in
so we have to trust each other on what each of each of us sees on their respective screens right
but honestly we are still very happy in the end it was a phenomenal race by paulie move that
crowned them the winner setting a new land speed for the fastest autonomous race car with a solo
vehicle speed record of over 173 miles per hour at victory zone there are no winners or losers
just a brilliant extra joyous bunch celebrating state-of-the-art innovation so
we are all engineer students right so we want to see like a cutting-edge technology we are a
big fan of cutting-edge technology and they did it i mean they ran like up to 172 mph like that
around there it was super fast sometimes like it's more than human better than humans yeah
in that sense i mean we want to we cannot say you know we cannot envy them you know they did they
deserve it and they did a great job and that's the reason why we all give give them a call
are we gonna catch up and go even further sure right now i mean like this is also not
another way this is a complication and so someday near soon not that far we will catch up there so
the the team from kais was was unbelievable right they made it into the the top four uh they were
out there in a passing competition they were right there they were one of the top four teams in the
world in this type of competition and i think you know if they continue the journey they're on
they can be right up there maybe in the winter's podium in the next couple of events