The Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team, posing by their autonomous passenger vehicle, won third place overall in the third year of AutoDrive Challenge II. Credit: Provided by Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team.
Vroom vroom! Penn State earns multiple wins in autonomous driving competition
Aug 15, 2024
By Mariah Lucas
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team (AVT) took home multiple wins, including third place overall, in its third year of the AutoDrive Challenge II. The competition tasks student teams with developing and testing a fully autonomous passenger vehicle on a controlled urban driving course over a weeklong competition.
Each year of the competition — which has been expanded to a fifth year, competition sponsors SAE International and General Motors recently announced — teams build on their vehicle’s autonomous capabilities. In year one, for example, teams focused on the basics of using sensors in their vehicles, while this year, teams navigated their unmanned vehicles through advanced tasks such as left turns and intersections.
Teams are ranked on their performance in static events, such as reports and presentations, as well as dynamic events, such as navigating their vehicle through a test track. Penn State AVT took home the following five top-three recognitions this year from the challenge, which took place June 2-8 at the University of Michigan:
- Overall, third place
- Overall Static Events, third place
- Concept Design Report & Software Requirements Specifications, second place
- Construction Challenge, third place
- Intersection Challenge, second place
“This year’s competition saw our team take its largest contingent of members ever to the competition,” said Gary Neal, assistant teaching professor of mechanical engineering and faculty adviser to Penn State’s AVT. “Spending 24 hours a day together for over a week allowed these students to bond and become a strong team. As it turns out, building an autonomous vehicle is hard! It’s an effort intensive in time, facilities and capital that is only possible with students who love to positively represent Penn State.”
Andrew Koenig, Penn State’s AVT team lead and a rising mechanical engineering senior, explained that transferring institutional knowledge between student teams that tend to change each semester has been the group’s greatest challenge.
“Integrating work from unique focus units, like testing, research or project management, gave us a challenge this year,” Koenig said. “We learned lessons about planning project milestones and allocating people onto different tasks to help us overcome this hurdle. Because of the adversity and talent that our team put forth throughout the year, we were able to match our impressive third place result last year and again this year.”
In addition to Koenig, this year’s competition team consisted of mechanical engineering majors Aleksandr Goncharov, Justin Kerr and Vincent Yang; computer science majors Parth Agarwal, Joseph Baker, Ethan Barclay, Devansh Agarwal, Anthony Landmesser, Andrew Latini, Junho Lee, Anh Phan, Tomer Sedan and James Williams; computer engineering major Tyler Ciuca; and electrical engineering majors Christopher Gerhart and Moses Tonade.
The Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute provided the team access to its automotive test track, garage space and team meeting areas throughout the year, while the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science provided financial assistance to the team.
“We are working diligently this summer to establish a plan for the competition’s next phase,” Koenig said. “I think this team has the personnel to truly develop something special. We have a great foundation of lessons learned from three years of a challenging competition that I believe will allow us to perform well at competition and positively impact more students at Penn State.”
Students interested in joining Penn State AVT and participating in the AutoDrive Challenge II can learn more by visiting the team’s website. Individuals or organizations interested in supporting the Penn State AVT may do so through this website.
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