WARRENDALE, Pa., Nov. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- SAE International is extending its AutoDrive Challenge™ competition with General Motors to a fourth year. The competition extension gives participating college students an additional year to develop and demonstrate that their autonomous vehicle (AV) can navigate an urban driving course as described by SAE Standard (J3016™) Level 4 automation.
"SAE International is proud to have such a strong ongoing partnership with General Motors, which enables us to continually enhance the AutoDrive program to challenge and prepare the next generation of automotive engineers," said Chris Ciuca, director of pre-professional education at SAE International. "We are excited to expand the competition, offering each team valuable time to integrate their automated platform designs into real-world applications, allowing them to validate their hard work and showcase their progress of reaching SAE J3016 Level 4 Autonomy."
The AutoDrive Challenge, part of SAE's Collegiate Design Series, consists of eight teams—students and faculty—from select U.S. and Canadian universities that work to achieve SAE Level 4 Autonomy, meaning their AV is able to freely perform all driving tasks and perceive its surrounding environment without a driver intervening, with some exceptions for weather or unusual environments. To further promote key learnings, participating teams have the opportunity to attend technology-specific workshops to help them in their concept refinement and overall autonomous technical understanding.
"General Motors is pleased that the teams will get another year to learn and develop skills in one of the most exciting parts of the automotive industry," said Kenneth Kelzer, vice president of global hardware components and subsystems at GM. "Autonomous vehicles have the potential to greatly improve the future through increasing safety and access to transportation. These teams have a unique opportunity to continue their hands-on work with this technology."
Now in its third year, the competition will focus on urban environment driving scenarios that have teams optimizing perception and sensing algorithms to navigate a fictitious ride sharing scenario through the Transportation Research Center's SMART Center. This will include a longer continuous autonomous drive than the past two years. Team will now encounter both static and dynamic objects, traffic control lights and signs, as well as various lane line scenarios.
To learn more information about the AutoDrive Challenge, please visit: https://www.sae.org/attend/student-events/autodrive-challenge
About SAE International
SAE International is a global association committed to advancing mobility knowledge and solutions for the benefit of humanity. By engaging nearly 200,000 engineers, technical experts and volunteers, we connect and educate mobility professionals to enable safe, clean, and accessible mobility solutions. We act on two priorities: encouraging a lifetime of learning for mobility engineering professionals and setting the standards for industry engineering. We strive for a better world through the work of our philanthropic SAE Foundation, including programs award-winning programs like A World in Motion® and the Collegiate Design Series™. More at http://www.sae.org.
SOURCE SAE International

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