Autonomous driving – TU Munich sends cars into the race in Las Vegas – District of Munich
It starts on January 7th. At 12 noon local time, the racing cars roll into the starting line at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. At the wheel: artificial intelligence. Also there: the “Autonomous Motorsport” team from the Technical University of Munich under the direction of Alexander Wischnewski and Phillip Karle, who have put the finishing touches to their software on the research campus in Garching over the past few months.
The Garching crew consists of a total of 60 doctoral students and students from the chairs for automotive engineering and control engineering. Your delegation is going to Las Vegas with a big chest. It was only last October that she was able to win the “Indy Autonomous Challenge”, a prize competition for the programming of an autonomous modified racing car on the Formula 1 track in Indianapolis among eight university research groups from the USA and Europe. There, Wischnewski and his colleagues demonstrated that artificial intelligence can control a car – in this case a Dallara IL-15 racing car – at a speed of more than 200 kilometers per hour. With its software, the TU racing car drove faster than the competition and brought the young researchers $ 1 million in prize money for the next developments.
In the race on January 7th, things will be a step more demanding: As part of CES 2022, one of the largest trade fairs for technological innovations, it’s not just about time – for the first time, two autonomously controlled cars will compete in the direct duel against each other. A major challenge for the control software and its developers. “In Las Vegas we will see a race with a significantly higher level of difficulty,” explains Markus Lienkamp, professor at the chair for vehicle technology at the TU.
Unlike in Indianapolis, autonomous cars no longer only recognize and drive around static obstacles in the race, but also react to other cars on the track. The artificial intelligence may have to recognize, evaluate and react to dangerous interactions or overtaking maneuvers – and at high speed, in fractions of a second. “We are showing the rapid technological progress in autonomous driving,” says Lienkamp.
A total of five teams take part in the race and, figuratively speaking, they send the algorithms developed by them as drivers onto the racetrack. The rules stipulate that two cars compete against each other. One racing car is always driving at a constant speed while the other is trying to overtake it. The game is repeated and the speed increased until a car can no longer overtake.
After the victory in Indianapolis, the TU team naturally hopes to defend its title in Las Vegas. The overriding goal, however, is ultimately to further improve your own software at the limit of its driving dynamics in competition against others and to demonstrate the potential of the software on the racetrack, according to the team’s website.
All the experience gained in university competitions should finally be able to be used in a practical way for everyday life in the future. “In the race, we can test and optimize the quick reaction of an autonomous vehicle to unforeseen events at high speeds. This experience brings us a big step further in the development of safer autonomous vehicles in road traffic,” said team leader Wischnewski after the victory in Indianapolis.