AUTODRIVE:
TEAM DELIVERS ON LONG
HISTORY OF AUTONOMOUS
VEHICLE COMPETITIONS
“AN UNDERDOG SUCCESS STORY”
Mechanical engineering’s AutoDrive
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
complete all three portions of the
AutoDrive Challenge, held at the
GM Desert Proving 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.
Each team was tasked to develop a
fully autonomous passenger vehicle
using a 2017 Chevy Bolt and present
on the social impacts of autonomous
vehicles before putting their electrical
designs and coding to the test by
navigating a closed test track in
autonomous mode.
“It is really an underdog success
story,” said Andy Cohen, a mechanical
22
engineering (’18) and a member of the
controls subteam and the business
subteam lead.
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. With the car in
Detroit, the team considered pulling
out of the competition if the car didn’t
make it back in time to complete the
necessary testing to ensure the safety
of student vehicle operators.
“…Later that week, we got notice
[from GM] that said, ‘We’ve fixed your
car, we’re sending it back,” said Cohen.
With 10 days to go before
competition, the team had to complete
100 hours of testing. Working around
the clock, the team had just enough
time to complete all the testing they
set out to accomplish, and according to
Cohen, the time crunch enabled their
success as the team was forced to use
a “fusion of old school and new school,”
methods integrating traditional