Two Canadian universities chosen for new Autonomous Vehicle Competition

At WCX 17: SAE World Congress Experience, SAE International and General Motors announced that the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo are finalists among eight North American universities who will compete in the upcoming autonomous vehicle design competition, AutoDrive Challenge.

This new autonomous vehicle design competition will be a three-year challenge to develop and demonstrate a full autonomous driving passenger vehicle. The competition’s technical goal is to navigate an urban driving course in an automated driving mode as described by SAE Standard (J3016) level four definition by Year 3.

The other finalists are: Kettering University, Michigan State University, Michigan Tech, North Carolina A&T University, Texas A&M University and Virginia Tech.

“SAE International is excited to expand our partnership with GM to build the future STEM workforce through the AutoDrive Challenge™,” said Chris Ciuca, director of Pre-Professional Programs at SAE International. “Building on our success through programs like Formula SAE, the AutoDrive Challenge™ launches a new platform to engage industry and academia in working towards a common goal of preparing young minds for the future of autonomous technologies.”

Throughout the three-year competition, students will focus on autonomous technologies and allow for modification and testing. They will work with real-world applications of sensing technologies, computing platforms, software design implementation and advanced computation methods such as: computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, artificial intelligence, sensor fusion and autonomous vehicle controls.

“Congratulations to the Universities of Toronto and Waterloo on this wonderful achievement, we are very excited to work closely with them over the next three years,” said Brain Tossan, director, Canadian Technical Centre, GM Canada. “We are proud to support SAE International and initiatives such as the AutoDrive Challenge™; as we look to grow our Canadian engineering base over the next few years, these student competitions are a great source of talent for us.”

“We are thrilled to be selected and look forward to competing,” said professor Tim Barfoot of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “The AutoDrive Challenge™ builds on our deep experience in robotics and autonomous vehicles, and we look forward to working with mentors from GM Canada to bring our students’ creativity and design savvy to the competition.”

“It is an honour to be chosen as a finalist and a great opportunity for our students,” said Derek Rayside, an electrical and computer engineering professor and AutoDrive Challenge™ faculty advisor at the University of Waterloo. “Student competitions such as the AutoDrive Challenge™ allow our undergraduates to gain first-hand experience while learning from industry leaders like GM Canada.”

GM will provide each team a Chevrolet Bolt EV as the vehicle platform. Strategic partners and suppliers will aid the students in their technology development by providing vehicle parts and software. Throughout the AutoDrive Challenge™ competition cycle, students and faculty will be invited to attend technology-specific workshops to help them in their concept refinement and overall autonomous technical understanding.

Year 1, which begins in the fall 2017, will focus on concept selection for university teams by having them become familiar with their sensing and computation software. They will be tasked with completion of a concept design written paper as well as simple missions for on-site evaluation. These simple missions can include straight roadway driving and object avoidance/detection.

In Year 2, the teams will refine their concept selections into a solid system development and will have more challenging dynamic events for testing onsite including dynamic object detection and multiple lane changing.

Year 3 will culminate with final validation of their design and concept refinement. The teams will navigate complex objectives of on-site testing, including higher speeds, turnabouts, and moving object detection.

For more information on the AutoDrive Challenge™, please visit http://students.sae.org/cds/autodrive/event/.