[CES2022] Saw Possibility of 200 km/h Without Driver... KAIST Ranks 4th in Autonomous Driving Racing

Proving Technology by Being the Only Asian Team Participating in the 'CES Autonomous Driving Challenge'

Professor Shim Hyun-chul (second from the right) and the KAIST research team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who participated in the official event "Autonomous Driving Racing" at CES 2022.
[Photo by KAIST]

[Las Vegas (USA) = Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heung-soon] A team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) proved its competitiveness by finishing 4th in an autonomous driving car racing competition featuring research teams from world-renowned universities.

The KAIST team ranked 4th in the final standings at the 'CES Autonomous Driving Challenge,' an official event of CES 2022, the world's largest electronics and IT exhibition held on the 7th (local time) at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the United States. They were the only team from an Asian country to participate in this competition, competing on equal footing with research teams from racing powerhouses in Europe such as Germany and Italy.

The Autonomous Driving Challenge is a competition designed to test the capabilities of autonomous driving software that enables racing cars capable of speeds up to 300 km/h to run unmanned on a 2.4 km circuit. Each participating team installs their developed algorithms and software on vehicles provided by the organizers.

At KAIST, the unmanned systems research team led by Professor Shim Hyun-chul of the Department of Electrical Engineering participated in this competition. This research team earned the right to participate in this event by finishing 4th at the 'Indy Autonomous Driving Challenge' held on October 23 last year in Indianapolis, USA. Although nine teams were initially scheduled to participate this year, four teams were eliminated in the qualification review held the day before, leaving a total of five teams competing on the day.

The competition was conducted in a one-on-one tournament format where the car running on the inner lane of the two lanes defends, and the car running on the outer lane attacks. The attacking vehicle wins if it overtakes the defending vehicle. In the first race, the KAIST team overtook the defending position of the Auburn University team from the USA, which was running at 80 mph (about 129 km/h), by running at 100 mph (about 160 km/h) and won. Afterwards, while running at 115 mph (about 185 km/h) in the defending position, they were overtaken by the attacking position of the Politecnico di Milano team from Italy running at 125 mph (about 201 km/h), finishing the competition in 4th place. The Politecnico di Milano team defeated the Technical University of Munich team from Germany to win the championship.

Professor Shim, who led domestic research on unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), expanded his research field to unmanned cars and has been dedicated to developing autonomous driving systems since 2012. The autonomous driving software installed in this competition took about a year to develop. In a situation where interest in this field was low, they covered the costs required to participate in the Autonomous Driving Challenge by combining research funding from some companies such as SK Hynix and Hyundai Motor Company and prize money from international competitions using drones.

Professor Shim said, "Once high-speed autonomous driving is commercialized, it will be possible to reach Daejeon from Seoul in one hour at 200 km/h without driver fatigue," urging interest and support to improve the completeness of related technologies.