West Point’s AVRAD (Autonomous Vehicle Research and Development) Team took second place in the Self-Drive Challenge of the 28th annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) held June 4-7.

Hosted by DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center and Oakland University, teams from around the world competed in a series of tasks such as lane following and pedestrian detection on a fully autonomous electric vehicle.

The AVRAD Team consisted of members from the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Systems Engineering (DSE) and Civil and Mechanical Engineering (CME).

Faculty from the Robotics Research Center (RRC) assisted the team with logistics and equipment. (Above from left to right) Dr. Peter Hanlon, an associate professor in EECS; Dr. Daniel J. Gonzalez, an Army Research Laboratory Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the RRC; the Dean of the Academic Board, Brig. Gen. Shane Reeves; Col. Christopher Korpela, an associate professor and director of the RRC; 2nd Lt. Hyun Jin Lim; and Dominic Larkin, the deputy director for the RRC, display the autonomous vehicle, GEM e2, on June 10, at West Point.

(Left) The Dean of the Academic Board, Reeves (left), sits inside the autonomous vehicle, GEM e2, as  Lim (right) explains the technological features that come with the vehicle, including the Xbox game controller for (by-wire) testing.

The AVRAD team modified the vehicle installing a Linux terminal, a Light Detection and Ranging system, five Mako cameras, and configured it so that the car can be controlled through a computer. However, for safety reasons, a driver is always inside to manually control the vehicle, if needed.         

                                                                                                                             Photos by Jorge Garcia/PV