DVIDS – News – Oakland U robotic competition develops future engineers for autonomy challenges

ROCHESTER, Mich.—Student engineers got a chance to scratch their competitive itch last week with the 31st annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGCV) here at Oakland University.

The IGCV is an annual event where collegiate robotics teams compete in a variety of unmanned mobility obstacles. The competition gives students from around the world a chance to gather and develop hands-on experience working with the latest technologies of interest to industrial ground vehicle development.

IGVC has been a longstanding collaboration between the automotive industry, government, and academia. Many judges and reviewers of the competition are scientists and engineers from the U.S. Army DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center, who volunteer to provide their expertise and input to the student engineers.

Teams participate in three categories for evaluation: Self Drive, AutoNav, and a design competition, accruing points towards individual and overall awards, which can result in cash prizes to fund the teams’ organizations. Self Drive focuses on autonomous street driving capabilities, testing their ability to navigate roads with street-legal vehicles, while AutoNav sees smaller vehicles built from the ground-up navigate an obstacle course using GPS coordinates autonomously.

Dr. KaC Cheok, co-chairman and co-founder of IGCV, and a professor in Oakland University’s Engineering Department, said that the real-world applications used in competition have evolved since its inception, and that the IGCV has adapted to the requirements to give students an applicable experience that can carry over to their future career.

“AI and robotics technologies, including autonomous self-driving vehicles, are advancing rapidly,” said Cheok. “The IGVC introduces university students to fundamental challenges related to engineering these technologies. It exposes them to projects beyond the classroom and encourages them to explore and learn from experience and experiments.”

With the evolution of artificial intelligence in the past year, many students sought to incorporate the new capabilities into their design, while others opted to continue without. The dynamic approach to how the teams tackled the course highlighted the diversity in development styles and the use-case advantages of the two options.

Students are also able to utilize GVSC’s Army Robotic Common Software (ARCS) to base their software platform on, providing the opportunity to interface with government products and use real-world applications to develop their vehicles.

After unloading their equipment, the teams spend their next four days designing their vehicles and developing their software, testing them with several rounds of qualifications in preparation for the finals.

Oklahoma University placed first overall for the second year in a row, lifting high the Lescoe Cup, named in honor of the late Paul Lescoe, co-founder of IGCV and a former GVSC robotics engineer.

This year’s international participation also made its mark on the competition when the Military Technical College, a rookie team based out of Cairo, Egypt, secured a 3rd-place overall finish and a 2nd-place finish in the Auto Nav Design category. Teams from India, Egypt and Canada also earned high marks throughout the competition.

Bernard Theisen, GVSC’s Division Chief for Ground Vehicle Robotics, who has been involved with the IGVC since 2002, highlighted the involvement of the international teams at this year’s event and the value it brings to the competition.

“Participation from University teams has been so important to the objective of IGVC, which is to provide a real-world opportunity for students to collaborate and innovate with the latest technologies that government, industry and academia have to offer. IGVC’s large international presence brings a diverse knowledge base gained from worldwide participation in IGVC and excel in their roles when they return home, which will enable future development of ground vehicle, robotic and autonomous technologies for years to come,” Theisen said.

With planning already beginning for next year’s IGCV, Theisen is hopeful that more collegiate robotics teams, domestic and international, will leverage the opportunities presented by Metro Detroit’s ground vehicle community.

“When more students are able to develop their skills at the academic and practical level, everyone wins,” said Theisen. “The IGCV provides a unique and incredible experience to college students of all levels that is highly sought after in the industry today. What we do here for these students is helping to shape the future of ground vehicle autonomy as we know it.”