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The is an international competition in which student teams develop autonomous driving and connectivity algorithms for 1:10 scale vehicles supplied by Bosch. They navigate in an environment that simulates a miniature smart city.

Student teams from all over the world took part in the tough competition. Initially there were 80 teams, of which 24 qualified to compete on site.

The Aalto team consisted of students Dimitrios Bouzoulas, Nandu Jagdish, Kiran G Krishnan, Joose Lankia and Henrik Toikka from the Schools of Electrical Engineering and Engineering. Postdoctoral researcher Risto Ojala was the team's mentor. The mentor's task was to take care of project management and to ensure that the development went according to schedule. Ojala also taught the students different concepts and algorithms related to autonomous driving and how to design the autonomous car's software and sensor architecture.

The students worked on their projects in collaboration with Bosch experts and university academic staff for several months. According to Ojala, the team's design work started in November 2023, when Ojala and laboratory engineer Jesse Pirhonen prepared the students' space in the Autonomy & Mobility laboratory.

'The competition was a great opportunity to coach motivated and smart students on topics related to my research. It was great to be involved in supporting the team's work, and very hands-on in teaching the topics of autonomous driving. I strongly believe in 'learning by doing', and I saw very tangibly the development of the students over the last six months,' says Ojala.

Risto Ojala is proud of the team and considers sixth place a significant achievement.

'The students developed various software solutions for autonomous driving, which enabled the miniature car to drive autonomously in different traffic situations on the race track. The students managed to create really impressive and well-designed autonomous driving solutions that also scale from the miniature model to the real world,' he says.

Ojala wants to encourage Aalto students to take part in international competitions with courage. He believes that these kind of competitions are unique opportunities to develop and apply your skills and learn a lot of new things.

'In addition to technical skills, you learn about teamwork and project management in such projects. Competitions also give you an international perspective and help you make international contacts. In addition to these benefits, such competitions are typically very social events, where you also have fun and compete in good spirits, rather than just performing seriously,' he says.

Watch the video from the event .