Indy Autonomous
Challenge (IAC)
TII made its IAC racing debut in October 2021 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, when it sponsored HiPert Lab’s EURORACING Team and helped it reach the finals with a world record of 223 kph for the fastest average lap speed. In its rebranded avatar as TII UNIMORE Team - with TII's ARRC on board as a participant, in collaboration with the EURORACING team, it clocked a top speed of 272 kph at the first overtaking race for autonomous vehicles in Las Vegas at the IAC @CES 2022 in January 2022.
TII UNIMORE returned to IAC for a third outing at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas in November 2022. The team completed its fastest lap at 34.0695 seconds, and its top speed was 257.4 kph. The team is now back in Vegas to test a more advanced software and scenario over last year. Here, the overtaking attacker and defender can maneuver greater levels of complexity with greater freedom.
TII UNIMORE Team and the Indy Autonomous Challenge
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The TII UNIMORE team collectively brings to the track extensive experience in designing, maintaining, and developing software, often called the brain in autonomous racing, as well as hardware to operate autonomous racing vehicles of all specifications.
The team's participation in such autonomous vehicles (AV) racing challenges helps progress the technology that drives the commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles as well as the deployment of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Such enhancements will lead to increased safety and higher performance levels across the transportation sector.
Dr. Najwa Aaraj
Chief Researcher, Cryptograhy Research Center,
Acting Chief Researcher, Autonomous Robotics Research Center
"We are gaining considerable insights through championing and participating in prestigious autonomous racing events such as the Autonomous Challenge @CES and previously in the Indy Autonomous Challenge. The fluid, complex environment of the world’s fastest racetracks serves as the most advanced and extreme testbeds for robotics and autonomous vehicles, and they will help accelerate our rate of innovation as we develop and prototype some of the most advanced algorithms and systems for autonomous vehicle software."
Dr. Marko Bertogna
Full Professor, University of Modena and Regio Emilia and on the Board of Advisors of ARRC, TII
As a full professor and CEO of the HiPeRT Lab at the university, his main research interests are in High-Performance Real-Time systems, especially based on multi- and many-core devices, autonomous driving, and industrial automation systems. Credited with first bringing together TII UNIMORE Team in its earliest avatar, he holds a PhD in Computer Sciences from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa. He has authored more than 100 papers and received 10 Best Paper Awards in first level international conferences and journals.
While it is drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen that get the attention in F1, it is the programmers who are the superstars of autonomous racing.
Specially
Equipped Racecar
The TII UNIMORE racecar is a Dallara AV-21 standard, considered the most technologically advanced as well as the fastest autonomous racecar on the circuit, which all Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) teams must use. The IAC Dallara AV-21 is outfitted with hardware and controls for autonomous driving and includes modified-for-autonomy Indy lights, a 4-cylinder turbocharged engine, onboard radar and lidar, optical cameras, and ruggedized edge computing.
The TII UNIMORE Team's car uses advanced prototype software that is continuously modified and upgraded in the run-up to race day.
Looking to the
Future
When autonomous racing first burst onto the motorsport circuit with Roborace’s Devbot, the world’s first self-driving car in 2016, no one imagined it would soon become a serious contender for the Grand Prix crown. Fast track to the present, and the sport is now so popular that autonomous racing challenges abound worldwide.
We are gaining considerable insights through championing and participating in prestigious autonomous racing events such as the Autonomous Challenge @CES2022 and previously at the first IAC cycle at Indianapolis, where we joined as sponsors. We hope that these challenges will help create awareness of the importance of safety in autonomous vehicles while highlighting the critical need for a more green and sustainable transportation sector.
- AV racing is the future and allows race car manufacturers and teams to test their cars in various configurations across diverse environments to identify problems without the need for human drivers.
- AV racing is also sustainable and environmentally friendly. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), automated cars could reduce energy consumption rates by 90% to 200%.
