MegaRide joins Euroracing, the international team that will run the race for driverless vehicles as part of the Indy Autonomous Challenge on 23 October in Indianapolis. The task assigned to MegaRide is to characterize the performance of the tires, in order to optimize the dynamic performance of the vehicle and the control logics of the car, an Indy Lights 15, based on Dallara chassis.
Euroracing, the dream team formed by the Universities of Modena and Reggio, Pisa, ETH Zurich and the Polish Academy of Sciences calls, MegaRide, also on behalf of Federico II, responds. The challenge is one that makes your wrists tremble, but which you cannot say no, because they are a window to the future: to participate, giving your opponents a hard time, in one of the most incredible car races ever conceived. This is the Indy Autonomous Challenge, a competition for autonomous vehicles, a race with cars equipped with Dallara chassis and cutting-edge technologies.
The appointment is for 23 October on the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway track and the European super team is already at work. The University of Modena and Reggio, with its spin-off HiPeRT, brings to the field the expertise gained in research on autonomous driving; Pisa the experience of equity investments in Roborace; the ETH of Zurich for the development of the vehicle and the knowledge of driverless races, of which he has some cups on the bulletin board; the Polish Academy, the experience gained in F1/10 races and the skills on neural networks for real-time perception. At this stage, MegaRide has the task that it already carries out in other motorsport areas at the highest levels: optimizing the dynamic performance of the vehicle and the complex interaction between tires, car and road surface. “The modularity of our technologies and the experience in binding simulation environments, such as those of driving simulators, is allowing us to face new expanding scenarios, from on-board estimation, to non-linear control, towards the great challenge of autonomous driving” says Aleksandr Sakhnevych, CTO of MegaRide, adding: “Whoever wins, it will be a success for everyone!”
“The partnership with MegaRide will allow us to refine the correlation of our models with the dynamics of the vehicles in the race. This is essential both for testing in simulated environments, that are as representative of reality as possible, and for the improvement of autonomous driving controllers. The enthusiasm and availability of MegaRide allowed us to enter into synergy in a very short time, a key factor for a time-sensitive competition of this type,” explains Marko Bertogna, Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, founder and coordinator of the HiPeRT laboratory.
After all, the Indy Autonomous Challenge represents an open-air laboratory made to measure as well as for fans of challenges, engines and racing, especially researchers who can experiment to bring innovations and solutions to the road. That it is a world dominated by research and passion for tomorrow, is proved by how the collaboration between MegaRide and HiPeRT was born: “with a simple handshake based on mutual knowledge of their respective fields of work and mutual esteem” says Flavio Farroni, CEO of MegaRide. Of the series: when the future passes, there is no time for formalities. It just needs to be grabbed.