Applied mathematics master's student Brian Mao is part of a team set to compete with rivals from around the world for a US $1-million top prize at the Indy Autonomous Challenge on Saturday.
Mao and Ben Zhang, a master’s student in electrical and computer engineering, expect to be part of history this weekend when an autonomous, million-dollar racecar they helped develop drives itself around the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour.
“This is something nobody else has done before – take autonomous vehicles up to those kinds of speeds,” said Mao. “There are a lot of unsolved problems that have to be tackled.”
Ten teams representing 21 universities will put modified Dallara AV-21 racecars through their paces at Indy, the largest sports venue in the world, as the culmination of a competition that included several simulated races.
Students from nine countries have been working since 2019 to program driverless cars equipped with the latest sensory equipment so they are capable of negotiating the track on their own at high speeds. Waterloo is the sole Canadian school involved.
Waterloo initially had a team of its own called WATORACE, but joined forces with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pittsburgh and the Rochester Institute of Technology to pool resources and expertise due to the complexity of the project.
The core of the Waterloo contingent, a subgroup of student design team WATonomous, also includes software engineering undergraduate Kyle Anderson, computer science undergraduate Ryan Larkin and Rollen D’Souza, a PhD student in electrical and computer engineering.
Read more about the team in the feature article in Waterloo News.