Warrendale, PA (July 2, 2019)  - It was a successful second year of SAE International and General Motor’s AutoDrive Challenge™ competition in Ann Arbor, Michigan May 29 - June 4^th. Eight teams of students from colleges in the United States and Canada competed with their team’s autonomous vehicle (AV) through an urban driving course challenge at MCity Test Track.

“It is exciting to be a part of an event where you can see the next generation of automotive engineers solving some of the most complex real-world driving problems,” said Chris Ciuca, the Director of Pre-Professional Education at SAE International. “Not only will these students’ hands-on experiences enable the progression of self-driving technology, but it also gives them a competitive edge in the workplace.”

This is the second year of the three-year autonomous vehicle competition, and this year’s challenge focused on navigating urban driving environment scenarios with static and dynamic objects. The one-of-a-kind test track facility, MCity, helped stimulate driving scenarios with a range of complexities that vehicles encounter in urban settings such as traffic signals, railroad crossings and pedestrians. This year’s challenge also required the vehicles to locate an appropriate parking spot, and park there autonomously.

The winners of this year’s competition are the students from the University of Toronto, aUToronto. Their team is comprised of undergraduate and graduate students from across U of T Engineering and the Department of Computer Science. aUToronto also took the lead in the first round of the challenge in 2017.

The competition is designed to be increasingly more challenging and complex each year. The first year of the AutoDrive Challenge, which began in fall of 2017, focused on concept design for university teams by having them become familiar with sensing and computation software. They were tasked with completion of a concept design written paper as well as programming simple missions for on-site evaluation. By year three of the AutoDrive Challenge (2020), the technical challenge is to navigate an urban driving course in automated driving mode as described by SAE Standard (J3016) level 4 definition.

The final challenge for this group of college students will take place at a new facility in Marysville, OH and more details will be announced soon.

View Highlights from this year's challenge.

Hear what students have to say about the competition and their experience on Autoline
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