Indy Autonomous Challenge

Indy Autonomous Challenge
Logo of the first 2021 race
CountryUnited States United States
Italy Italy
Inaugural season2021
Teams10[1]
ConstructorsDallara
Tyre suppliersBridgestone
Current champions2-car passing event: Italy PoliMOVE Autonomous Racing Team,
fastest-lap time trial: United StatesCavalier Autonomous Racing
Official websiteindyautonomouschallenge.com

The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) is the main and, as of July 2023, the only active racing series for autonomous race cars. The vehicles participating in the IAC are SAE level 4 autonomous as they are capable of completing circuit laps and overtaking maneuvers without any human intervention.[2]

Exclusively made up of student/university teams, each team participating in the competition uses the same vehicle, a custom-built Dallara AV single-seater. The AV-21 was derived from Dallara's IL-15 model with the addition of sensors, actuators and computing hardware necessary for fully autonomous driving.[3] By 2024, the series was using the Dallara AV-24 specification, with the same base Dallara chassis but an entirely re-engineered compute hardware, sensor suite, and software stack.[4] The participating teams are made up of university researchers from universities worldwide, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, KAIST, Politecnico di Milano, TUM, ETH Zurich, University of Virginia and Purdue University.

The first race took place in October 2021 on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS),[5] after an initial three-year period of simulator-only challenges,[6] which started in November 2019 as a proving ground to allow competing teams to develop and demonstrate the ability to race autonomously before receiving the physical race car. Since then, the competition has raced on several notable oval circuits such as Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, and in June 2023 in its first road course circuit, at the Monza Circuit.[7]

Over the four years of on-track IAC competitions, the challenge has advanced to include two competitive events. Beginning in 2021, individual time trials are run by all teams over the course, and the event is scored with the fastest lap achieved in five minutes on an oval track. Later,[when?] a multicar event was added: a two-car scripted passing competition, with increasingly higher speeds assigned to the lead car, where the two cars "keep passing each other like a game of cat and mouse until one of them has to give up, or they have an accident.”[8]

By 2024, the autonomous racecars were achieving top-speeds on oval circuits of 171 mph (275 km/h) and the two-car passing races were achieving successful passes of a fixed-speed vehicle maintaining 160 mph.[8]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference wishtv20240906 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Indy Autonomous Challenge - Official Website". Indy Autonomous Challenge - Official Website. 2023-02-13. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  3. ^ "Racecar - AV-21 Dallara". Indy Autonomous Challenge - Official Website. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference robotrep20240906 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "PoliMOVE Wins Ansys Indy Autonomous Challenge Simulation Race - Indy Autonomous Challenge - Official Website Autonomous Driving Blog". Indy Autonomous Challenge - Official Website. 2021-07-26. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  7. ^ "Indy Autonomous Challenge". Milano Monza Motor Show. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  8. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference fox20240906 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).