(iTers News) -The morning of July 19, 2012 breaks with a sudden pouring of heavy rain.
About 100 intelligent mock-up car development hobbyist groups from 50 universities across the country are striding their way into the Olympic Gymnasium of Hanyang University in downtown Seoul to join ‘Intelligent Mock-up Car Racing Contest 2012’
They are banding together in a small group sprawling across hallways and tiered-seats on the gymnasium’s stadium to re-calibrate their mock-up car operations, or put them to final test to ensure whether they operate as programmed, or not.
Hosted by the department of automotive engineering of the Hanyang University, the Intelligent Mock-up Car Racing Contest 2012 is an annualized miniature car racing competition where university students are contesting the intelligent feature as well as the speed of their self-designed mock-up cars.
All of mock-up cars on the contest are built around Freescale Semiconductor’s S12X microcontroller chip, featuring a wealth of radar, vision and proximity sensors.
Freescale Semiconductor is one of the main sponsors for this racing competition, including ACE Lab, BMW Korea, MathWorks Korea, a Korean subsidiary of MathWorks, Inc., Mando Corp, and Continental Airlines
The most decisive technology, which determines a winner and a loser, is a smart cruise control technology. The technology is a set of software algorithm that works in sync with a front-end radar sensor not only to calculate the distance between a guiding pace-maker car on front and the car-on-the-race on rear, but also compare the respective speeds of the two cars.
Smart cruise control
Then, the algorithm gets into action together with the MCU to keep the car-on-the race on rear long enough distance away the front-running car to avoid a direct rear collision.
The winner will be a car that cruises along the racing lane to the fastest speed to cut through the finish line at the earliest time of all cars on the race.
Some of the contestants are interviewed by iTers News video news team.
“I feel so nervous and tensed to see that the size of this contest is bigger than I expected. It’s really amazing to find how well this contest is organized and prepared. I must go all-out to win,” said one female student on the competition.
“It’s so embarrassing to detect errors at the last moment. I am not only reprogramming, but also cannibalizing it to reactivate it properly. Please understand me. This is the first time I join this racing contest,” said another contestant, whose car is on the mend.
“I am from Hongik University.”
“How do you feel? "Are you sure everything will go well as planned?”
“I am not sure, but I will try it, Victory!"
A sleepy student, who was up all night putting final touches on his car, is leaning on edge of the fence to take rest.
“Are you sleepy? “ “Yes, I had not slept every single moment last night.”
“I am from Kyung Hee University. I did my best. I think it will be somewhat difficult to crown the contest, but I wish best results because I have made all-out efforts to win.”
Race kicks off
“Our car nickname is HIPO, which stands for High Intelligence Performance Organization. That means our team aim for high performance.”
The racing contest has just kicked off.
A car is racing closely after a tail of the guiding pace-maker car, and throttles down and up its speed to avoid the collision with the leading car, temporarily hitting a brake, and then start cruising again.
Some of them are veering out of the lane to the dismay of their designers.
One car successfully has finished the race, and its team of car designers burst into cheering shouts, giving a standing ovation with an overwhelming applause.
iTers News interviewed Yeonho Hwang, country manager with Freescale Semiconductor Korea, Inc.
“Freescale Semiconductor is one of main sponsors for this mock-up car racing contest. This sponsorship is part of our corporate cultural activities for social cause. We have been well managing an industrial and academic cooperation program across the world, “said he.
“Our goal is to tap into a huge pool of Korean engineering students to help them to get schooled and trained as a best crop of talented engineers for embedded control system,” added he.
Throttle up and down
“Some of the post-graduates, who had joined this contest, are found to do a lot of innovative engineering works across the automotive and semiconductor industry. More than 10 years have passed since we kicked off this contest. For the near future, we are more focusing on robot systems. Our next plan is to sponsor host an intelligent mock-up robot contest,” he emphasized
Wildcard survival round has started to give the best performers of the dropouts another chance.
You are now seeing a final round racing competition, which just opens only for the top 20 performers in the preliminary race
“Watching this contest, I feel university students of our country are well qualified and talented to do whatever they are assigned to do, if opportunities are given,“ said Dr. Myoungho Sunwoo, professor and chairman of department of automotive engineering with Hanyang University.
Pull in the right space with no bump
Added he,“I am expecting all players of this contest will greatly contribute to sharpening the competitive edge of Korea’s car and IT industry.”
An out-of-round, test-run contest for automatic car parking system is getting more attention, inviting great applause from attendants and contestants. You are now watching how exactly a car on the test-run pulls into the narrow, assigned place of the parking lot with no margin of error.
It’s cool and amazing !
Professor Dr. Sunwoo declared the final winner, “The Winner of the Grand Prix is Hacker from Kyung Hee University".
It is already past 13:00 pm, and rain came to an abrupt halt, unwittingly. The clean and blue sky clears out of clouds, shedding rays of bright sunlight.
According to Korea’s old, traditional folklore, the clean and blue sky bodes well for the future. So does it for the Korean IT industry.
Reported by JH Bae & Austin Jung