UC San Diego students lead autonomous race car team to 2nd place at IAC

Team AI Racing Tech posing with their autonomous
car and second place winnings at Texas Motor Speedway.

Little more than a year after the inaugural Indy Autonomous Challenge full-scale autonomous car race, Team AI Racing Tech, which includes engineering, computer science and data science students from UC San Diego, took second place at a follow-on race held at the Texas Motor Speedway.

Of the nine teams from around the world competing in the challenge, only six qualified for the head-to-head race in Texas on Nov. 11. AI Racing Tech clenched second place on race day. The team is comprised of students from the University of Hawaii, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon. The two student technical leads this season were Haoru Xue, a recent UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering graduate, and Siddharth Saha, a computer science and engineering master’s student at UC San Diego who earned his bachelor’s degree here in data science. Computer engineering student Jose Jimenez-Olivas and recent electrical engineering undergraduate alumnus Frank Garcia were also part of the team this season. UC San Diego Contextual Robotics Institute lecturer Jack Silberman is one of the team's advisors. 

UC San Diego team members Siddharth Saha,
Frank Garcia, Haoru Xue and Jose Jimenez-Olivas. 

UC San Diego, through its Contextual Robotics Institute, is an associate institution partner with the University of Hawaii’s AI Racing Tech Team. Each of the nine IAC teams has transformed a Dallara AV-21 race car into an autonomous vehicle, developing perception, navigation, and control systems with support from IAC sponsor companies, in order for the car to function completely autonomously.

In addition to the inaugural race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and this race at Texas Motor Speedway, the students also participated in a race during the famed Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES) at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and are now gearing up for their second CES race in Las Vegas in January 2023.

The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) is a collaborative effort that brings together public, private and academic institutions to challenge university students around the world to imagine, invent and prove a new generation of automated vehicle software and inspire the next generation of STEM talent.

Learn more about the Indy Autonomous Challenge: https://www.indyautonomouschallenge.com/