AI Racing Tech became the top-ranked US Team after the final race of the head-to-head Indy Autonomous Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway on November 11, 2023
Check out the recorded livestream at https://www.twitch.tv/indyachallenge
AI Racing Tech Among Top Teams to Demo Next-Gen Autonomous Racecars at CES 2024
The University of California, Berkeley, Robot Open Autonomous Racing (ROAR) program, together with its multi-university partners comprising the AI Racing Tech team, will serve among three leading international teams to test out the next-gen Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) racecar. The updated world’s fastest and most advanced autonomous racecar will be unveiled at CES 2024, held January 9-12 in Las Vegas, NV.
Three top racing teams from this year’s IAC competition will test out the next-gen model, with its upgraded controls, perception sensors, qualified systems, and other improvements on the original Dallara AV-21 introduced in 2021. The manufacturer’s Autonomous Vehicle (AV) series is based on the classic carbon-composite Indy NXT chassis – similar in size, weight, and performance to racecars Indy drivers have driven to victory, with one major distinction: no driver’s seat. Instead, the cockpit is outfitted with specialized hardware and high-performance controls to provide complete driverless operation.
Why We Race...
In the Indy Autonomous Challenge, the teams race with purpose, pushing untested boundaries and driving research to ensure the highest caliber of safety for the future of commercial autonomy. Follow AI Racing Tech's journey into the 2023-2024 season alongside UC Berkeley College of Engineering, UC San Diego, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Hawai‘i System.
No driver, just software. Imagine driverless autonomous vehicles battling wheel to wheel for track position and podium success. All to help improve the performance and safety of vehicles of tomorrow.
Autonomous racing is the ultimate engineering challenge. The driver is replaced with a variety of sensors that act as the eyes and ears of the vehicle, feeding the data to a planning and control algorithm that students develop and tune.
Kicking off the Season
In the final stretch to prepare for the November 11 Indy Autonomous Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway, the Team put in long days and long nights in Fort Worth. Footage courtesy of Zhihao Deng, filmmaker "Cute Cake."
INITIATIVES
AI Racing Tech team is one of nine teams that currently compete in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC). The IAC is a collaborative effort bringing together public-private partnerships with academic institutions to challenge university students around the world to imagine, invent, and prove a new generation of automated vehicle software to run fully autonomous racecars. As this competition is a significantly greater challenge the UH-ART team is proud to be collaborating with the UH-Manoa Robotics Lab, UC Berkeley, and Triton-AI UC San Diego to form the AI Racing Tech team!
A main focus of AI Racing Tech has been developing advanced simulation environments that test autonomous software stacks in a real-world setting ("Sim-to-Real"). This Sim-to-Real focus is a valuable solution to the challenge of needing many hours on a racetrack to properly advance an autonomous software stack.
AI Racing Tech has been a leading developer in simulation environments for both the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Las Vegas Motor Speed Way, developing 3D maps and race car dynamics for SVL Simulator and CARLA simulator. The team also supports integration with BeamNG.
In the summer of 2023, UC Berkeley assumed the position of Lead University within the AI Racing Tech Team, marking a pivotal moment in the team's journey. Building upon two years of successful collaboration with contributors from UC San Diego, Carnegie Mellon, and UH-Maui, this transition signified a changing of the guard while emphasizing the team's commitment to continuity and progress in the field of AI racing technology.
The original AI Racing Tech (ART) team emerged from the UH-Maui course held in the spring of 2020, focused on Autonomous Vehicle Technology. The AVTech Class aimed to provide Maui students with hands-on knowledge and experience in Autonomous Vehicle Technology, covering architecture, structures, and the construction of scaled autonomous vehicles.
In 2021, ART expanded its horizons by welcoming student and faculty contributors from prestigious institutions, including UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University. This collaboration enriched the team's capabilities and knowledge base.
In a remarkable achievement, in 2022, ART secured the 2nd position at the Indy Autonomous Challenge in Texas, establishing themselves as the leading All-American team in the competition. Building on this success, ART continued to shine, securing 3rd place in the 2023 Indy Autonomous Challenge at CES.
With the transition of leadership to UC Berkeley, the core team remains unaltered, ensuring that fans can expect to see their favorite members continuing to drive advancements in AI racing technology. Gary Passon's role as AI Motorsports Principal provides valuable leadership continuity, reinforcing the team's dedication to technical excellence and innovation. Together, all four universities are committed to upholding a tradition of excellence and advancing the field, as evidenced by their remarkable journey and achievements.
The AI Racing Tech team proudly counts on the support of a number of industry corporations and leaders as well as many local community sources.
Primary Sponsor 2022
Gaia Platform is a data-centric, high-performance environment for rapidly building complex applications at the edge. This allows edge and autonomous machines to carry out complex activities over long periods of time, unsupervised, and often disconnected. The platform is written in a declarative programming language allowing developers to write 10X less code, making it easier to write, debug, test, deploy and maintain.
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NEWS
UC Berkeley ROAR Takes the Lead
The University of California, Berkeley, the world’s number one public university, is assuming leadership of the nation’s most decorated autonomous racecar team in the Indy Autonomous Challenge. After more than three years since its start at the University of Hawai’i, the AI Racing Tech Team has risen to prominence for advancing a sophisticated stack of autonomy, AI, and “sim-to-real” technologies under high-stakes, high-speed racing conditions as well as for winning races and setting speed records. As UC Berkeley takes on the role of lead university, the roster of universities, principals, and industry sponsors comprising and supporting the team remains the same.
CES , Race Day Recap!
AI Racing Tech sweeps into 3rd place taking out MIT at CES in January 2022. See the winning race here
Texas 2022 ART takes 2nd Place!
In an upset AI Racing Tech sweeps into 2nd place into 2nd place in the international Head to Head at Texas Motor Speedway. Find out more
2nd place @ Autonomous Karting Series, 2022!
HUGE Shout out to the TritonAI and Berkeley ROAR team for their 2nd place victory at this year's @evGrandPrix! @AiRacingTech,#UCBerkley, and #TritionAI have been extremely busy in the garage and lab to make this amazing day happen!
CES, Race Day Recap!
Once again, #history was made by the teams at this year's #ces2022. Although we did not get the chance to compete on race day, we made huge advancements thanks to UC San Diego, Triton AI UC San Diego, and some help from our #Berkeley friends! We can't wait for the next race, where we expect to make some heads turn and go even faster! Big Mahalo to everyone that made this race possible!
Indy, Race Day Recap!
AI Racing Tech team couldn't be more proud of all the hard work that went into ACHIEVING 6th place!! Big Mahalo to Triton AI UC San Diego for being our partner in crime, Gaia Platform for the amazing guidance and support, and ADLINK Technology for making such fast robots! We would also like to give a special shoutout to Ubuntu for the ultra-reliable operating system, and #Z1analyzer for the amazing live telemetry!
See more about Racing Simulations!
UH competes in first-ever international driverless car racing event!
The University of Hawaiʻi made history competing in the Indy Autonomous Challenge competition—the first-ever autonomous race car event. The team, UH AI Racing Tech, achieved its fastest speed ever and placed 6th in the competition.