Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 2 Summer 2018 | Page 22

STORY BY ERICA CORDER - WITH STEPHANIE KAPLLANI
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Al Wicks, associate
professor of mechanical en-
gineering, signs the hood of
the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt that
Victor Tango AutoDrive
Team modified for com-
petition. This tradition of
signing the hood of the car
began 11 years ago, when
the original Victor Tango
team signed the hood of the
vehicle they entered into the
DARPA Urban Challenge.
Photo by Andy Cohen
AutoDrive captures 3rd in year one
After a journey that in-
volved a crash, a dead battery,
and late-night coding sprints,
a Virginia Tech engineering
team took third place in the
first year of an autonomous
vehicle competition held by
the Society of Automotive
Engineers (SAE) and General
Motors.
Victor Tango AutoDrive
was the only one of eight
teams to successfully com-
plete all three portions of the
AutoDrive Challenge, held
at the GM Desert Proving
MOMENTUM
Ground in Yuma, Arizona.
The challenges were based
on complex perception,
navigation, and behavior
algorithms for a self-driving
car, such as stopping at stop
signs or staying in lane lines.
The road to Yuma
For the Victor Tango team,
the road to Yuma itself was
the first challenge.
“It is really an underdog suc-
cess story,” said Andy Cohen,
a mechanical engineering
senior ('18) and a member of
SUMMER 2018
PAGE 22
the controls subteam and the
business subteam lead.
Weeks prior to competition,
an incident resulted in the
vehicle crashing through
the garage door at the team
facility. No one was hurt,
however, and no major dam-
age was done to the $100,000
of hardware mounted to the
roof of the vehicle.
Less than a month before
the competition, the battery
on the Bolt died, and the car
had to be sent back to GM for
servicing.