Fewer than Half of Competitors Complete Autonomous Vehicle Race

Point One Navigation, a San Francisco-based location services startup, won the Self Racing Cars challenge last weekend at California’s Thunderhill West race track in northern California.

It took Point One’s vehicle three minutes and 38 seconds to navigate the twisty, undulating 1.9-mile track. Only four of the nine competing vehicles managed to complete the course on their own, but that was up from just two vehicles that did so during last year’s inaugural race.

Vehicles were driven separately around the track. Each had a backup driver on board to take control if necessary.

Started by tech entrepreneur Josh Schachter, Self Racing Cars is geared toward students, startups and other small companies. The race gives participants access to share ideas with other teams and test their technologies in a controlled, real-world environment.

Point One and most of the other teams used GPS and other location tracking systems to follow digital maps around the track. Udacity Inc.’s student team employed artificial intelligence technology to pilot a car owned by PolySync Technologies, a Portland, Ore.-based software company.

Teams and other participants, along with their area of specialization, were:

• AutonomousStuff (autonomous hardware and development platform)
• CivilMaps (cognition and autonomous mapping)
• Comma.ai (autonomous vehicles)
• Compound Eye (vision)
• NVIDIA (self-driving car platforms)
• Point One Navigation (spatial localization for autonomous cars)
• PolySync (software platform)
• Revl (action camera)
• Renovo Motors (vehicle platform for autonomous/connected/clectrics)
• Righthook (vehicle simulation and testing)
•  Right Turn Clyde (autonomous gokart)
• Sanborn (HD maps)
• Swift Navigation (GPS for autonomous vehicles)
• Udacity (autonomous vehicle education)
• Vector AI (deep-learning Intelligence vehicle)
• Velodyne (Lidar sensors)
• Xsens (IMU, AHRS, GNSS/INS)