Meet the college students racing for $1M in the Indy Autonomous Challenge

Before we get to unveiling our amazing autonomous race car, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the more than 500 students, faculty, and researchers from universities around the world who are working tirelessly to build the AI that will drive this first of it's kind race car. These brilliant minds will serve as the talent base powering the autonomous technology industry for years to come. And it is their commitment to innovation, even working and collaborating virtually through a global pandemic that has kept the Indian autonomous challenge going strong. To help me showcase the teams let me introduce Matt Pete, managing director at Energy Systems Network, who has been instrumental in organizing and leading teams through the challenge. [MUSIC] The Indy Autonomous Challenge is a head-to-head high speed race of fully autonomous vehicles at the world-famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway. [SOUND] The town that showed up in parallel.>> When we saw this opportunity come up, it seemed like a great opportunity to get involved. Vehicles probably 2025 miles an hour and to go 200 miles an hour. It seemed like the. Really interesting opportunity to do something that hadn't been done before. It really brings out these strong edge cases that we're seeing for driverless vehicles.>> It's coming in such a fast rate that a lot of these sensors by the time you get a new update, you're already multiple meters ahead and so their algorithms have to keep up. My name is Maya Suvarna. I'm currently a senior undergraduate Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh. And I know that women are often underrepresented in the robotics as a STEM fields. So I'm very grateful that I have the opportunity to be in this position where I can lead a team.>> This truly is a global competition that brings together some of the brightest minds from around the world. From your races, something which is classic of our culture in our DNA, Competition in racing is a very simple and undisputable way of assessing the point of what you're doing. Prepping 10, 15 cars on the tracks simultaneously, creates a ridiculously complex scenario. Where the sole German team entering the competition there are no lanes, there are no real words And you really have to understand what the other people are going to do. When we're designing our software we're really trying to mimic the way that the human race driver would be driving the car. All these things are really talented. And so to be able to beat them, you can't do it casually. You have to really give it everything And motorsport racing, there is a saying that if everything seems under control, you are not going fast enough. Probably not such great speed. You don't have the luxury of time to figure things out. And by the time you figure things out, they're already there The more risky vehicle may just win, but the more risky vehicle may also To be the one that crashes on turn to one, we really don't wanna mess this vehicle up. And so that's why safety has been one of the biggest things we've been striving for. I imagine a lot of tech will come out of Indy autonomous challenge for sort of high speed maneuvering for safety reasons. We're also very fortunate to have Clemson University's International Center for Automotive Research. So it was a natural fit for deep honors to take on the project of designing the common vehicle that will be used for the autonomous challenge. But it's that traditional open wheel race car format that fans are used to seeing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It's green, that's when it's going all out at 200 miles per hour. The performance is going to be intense and the competition's gonna be fierce. [MUSIC]