Every commuter wants to ride in the car than can drive itself and students from Lawrence Technological University are working to make that a reality.
A team of engineers from a variety of fields placed second in the autonomous challenge. That's the main event of the 16th annual Intelligent Group Vehicle Competition, which was held at Oakland University.
The challenge is designing and building model vehicles that navigate obstacle courses without human guidance. The students have to put together complex computer programming and robotics to make it happen.
"It was a tremendous accomplishment to do so well with a vehicle that had been developed from scratch," says Lawrence Tech Associate Professor CJ Chung, the team's faculty advisor.
The idea behind the competition is to promote the development of automated and intelligent vehicles that can have both civilian and military applications. A number of big name institutions are interested in this type of technological development ton sponsor it. That list includes Microsoft, General Motors, the Department of Defense, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center.
Lawrence Tech's team competed with forty-seven other teams from 39 universities. For its efforts Lawrence Tech's team won $2,500.
Source: Lawrence Technological University
Writer: Jon Zemke
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