The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) offers remarkable insights in many ways. Highly committed students show that they are intensively studying the latest technologies in order to apply them in practice. For this, they chose a particularly challenging discipline: racing. In Monza, the teams once again tested their limits.
The focus of the IAC is artificial intelligence, including fundamental aspects of autonomous driving. This includes collecting, evaluating, and assessing data from various sensors in order to derive a driving strategy. But that is not all: These complex processes always take place at the limits of driving dynamics. Always with the risk that the smallest error can lead to the total loss of the vehicle.
Benchmark for the Industry
The industry supports the competition with considerable effort and advice. As is usual in racing, the components used are among the most powerful and often the most expensive on the market. Robustness and performance, which make the difference, are the basis for component selection. An opportunity for the industry to prove the suitability of its products and to optimize them.
Technology and the Fascination of Motorsport
The IAC organization skillfully combines technology with the fascination of motorsport, making innovation easy to understand and experience. In doing so, the IAC does not focus on itself, but shows that technology remains controllable – especially under extreme conditions. This creates confidence in the new technologies. This confidence is necessary when it comes to commercializing the technology. Thus, the students of the IAC competition are now preparing the market for the products they will work on in the future.
Catalyst for Autonomous Driving
During the competition in Monza, we had the opportunity to talk to the teams and the president of the IAC. The enthusiasm for sports, the fascination for new technologies, and the joy of advancing something together drive the students. With their commitment, the IAC teams are a catalyst for autonomous driving.
Impressions from the Racetrack
Autonomous Race Cars in the IAC Series Run on Central Computers from dSPACE
dSPACE supports the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) as the exclusive on-vehicle computer technology sponsor. dSPACE provides the AUTERA AutoBox, a prototyping and data recording system, for all vehicles. The dSPACE systems act as the central computer in all the vehicles and enable fully autonomous operation of the vehicles on the racetrack.
With the AUTERA AutoBox, dSPACE provides the robust, high-performance central computer that reads and processes data from lidar and radar sensors and cameras, as well as from buses and networks in the vehicle. The special feature of the AUTERA AutoBox is the unique combination of high computing power and a best-in-class data bandwidth (50 Gbit/s) in a compact form factor.
Monza – The Premiere of Driverless Race Cars in the “Temple of Speed”
As part of the Milano Monza Motor Show MIMO 2023 motorsport event, the IAC was an inspiring experience from June 16 to 18: Between parades of historic race cars and high-speed runs of modern super sports cars, the autonomous racing vehicles showed their skills on the challenging track: Free practice, qualifying, and the Indy Autonomous Challenge timed race brought the Autodromo Nazionale Monza to life.
Each team competed with a Dallara AV-23, which was controlled by AI-based software developed by each team. The software running on dSPACE's high-performance computer uses sensors and controls actuators so that the car can drive autonomously along the high-speed course.
The PoliMOVE team from the Politecnico di Milano won the competition with the fastest lap time ahead of the teams from the Technical University of Munich TUM (2nd place) and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (3rd place).
dSPACE MAGAZINE, PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023
All those sensors generate a lot of data that needs to be processed. Without the central AUTERA processing unit, we wouldn't be able to do what we do on the racetrack.
AUTERA is reliable. It hasn't given us any problems, but it's given us enough computing power.
AUTERA is very robust and has a lot of useful features for autonomous vehicles.
AUTERA is the brain of our car and executes the software we developed, and does so in a very reliable way.
We have to process data from many sensors – AUTERA works very well and is very robust in environments with strong vibrations.
One thing I can say for sure about AUTERA: You do not need to worry. It is a rock-solid product. It meets the computational needs of the teams.”
We had our biggest accident with immense damage to the car. We were able to salvage AUTERA and it still works.
The teams love AUTERA's many different interfaces, such as the slot for SIM cards that allows us to add LTE cellular network to the car.
