ESTACA wins first prize in 2 UTAC Challenge categories

A challenge to develop skills in autonomous vehicles

The UTAC Challenge is the first real-life student challenge dedicated to future autonomous and connected mobility. It focuses on the design of partial or complete vehicles, or systems and functions linked to future mobility. Teams can compete in several categories, such as autonomous parking, pedestrian detection, autonomous driving...

Demonstrations are either dynamic, static or virtual (simulation tool), during one day, on the UTAC-Monthléry autodrome.

The challenge is organized by UTAC with the support of the Société des Ingénieurs de l'Automobile (SIA).

A team working on autonomous driving, pedestrian and traffic light detection

This year, a team of 4 students from ESTACA'Lab's Autonomous Vehicles and Connected Systems engineering apprenticeship worked on the Twizy's urban driving capabilities. They designed and implemented systems enabling the Twizy to follow a predefined trajectory autonomously, detect pedestrians and communicate with a traffic light in advance.

The real-life demonstrations on the day and the results of the simulations won them first prize in their category!

A team on autonomous parking

The 2nd team, made up of student engineers from the automotive sector, worked on autonomous parking. This team built on what had been developed last year, while developing a new system enabling the car to find its way in space not using GPS, but by modeling the environment in real time using the vehicle's on-board cameras.

This new solution also won them 1st place in the parking category.

Congratulations to them, and to the teacher-researchers who supervised these teams throughout the year. Many thanks also to the industrialists who supported these projects.