Location: O’Reilly Institue, Trinity College Dublin

Date: 8 Apr

As part of a year-long project that aims to bring a more practical side to learning, students from Trinity College Dublin will race miniature cars in an autonomous vehicle race taking place today in the O’Reilly Institute at Trinity College Dublin on the 8th April from 2-6pm.

The Engineering Design module offered by the Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department and the School of Computer Science at Trinity, combines computer vision expertise from the ADAPT Centre to teach the principles of perception, planning and control of self-driving vehicles.

Over 30 groups of second year students will take part in the competition that will see them race small autonomous buggies through a slalom course consisting of gates formed from a pair of coloured pillars.

The students were tasked with conceiving, designing, building and programming the miniature Formula 1 cars in order to apply the basic principles of science and engineering. The hardware and algorithms used in the project reflect those of full-size autonomous vehicles that are being developed by the automotive industry.

The first prize in the competition has been sponsored by Jaguar Land Rover with the second and third prizes sponsored by the ADAPT Centre at Trinity College Dublin.