University of Applied Sciences of Windesheim wins the 2022 Self Driving Challenge Date

The 2022 Self Driving Challenge was won by the Windesheim student team from Zwolle. The Windesheim team was seven bends ahead of the Groningen team and took the coveted title. The student team that let a self-driving vehicle race across the track in the fastest time, or as far as possible, is the winner of the Self Driving Challenge.

After a tough qualifying session, the autonomous kart really took off during the final. One team had to run to keep up with the kart, the other team came trudging. But speed was not decisive for the game, just as the starting positions of the teams proved to be no predictor of the winner.

The qualification of the winning team went anything but smoothly. Zwolle performed worse than the other teams on the Wednesday prior to the final. Their kart just could not make it autonomously through the infamous first bend. So during the final, the Windesheim team mainly focused on making it through the first bend. When they managed to do that, the kart rolled autonomously from one bend to the other at running speed. The jury counted a total of 14 bends achieved out of a total of 23 bends. The weather was also on their side during the final. The Zwolle model worked best in cloudy weather, and it happened to be cloudy on that day.

The weather worked against the teams of Hanze University of Applied Sciences and Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. They would have been happy with some sunshine during the final rounds. For both teams, the weather was less than ideal for their model. The software was optimised for better weather conditions. Unfortunately the weather was not so great, so the kart of both teams made the bends with a bit of a wobble. During qualification, the Hanze team made it to bend five; in the final, they made it to bend eight. Quite an improvement after all. The Rotterdam team just passed bend one, but their school had allowed them significantly less development time to program the winning solution. So their result was also quite an achievement.

The winners of the challenge not only get the honour and a beautiful trophy, but also get a unique automotive experience. ‘Functional Safety – How To Build Safer Cars’ was offered to them by knowledge partner Brace Automotive Development in Eindhoven.

With the Self Driving Challenge, RDW offers young talent the opportunity to develop their smart mobility knowledge and skills over a period of six months. A unique project, where student teams compete with each other by letting their self-driving vehicle race on the circuit. The ambition of the Self Driving Challenge is to also use passenger's cars besides karts, and to make this project grow into a global challenge across three continents.

The teams worked this year with the electric kart. They developed a solution using hardware on loan, and software and data that were made available to them. The teams started the challenge from scratch and had six months to make the kart self-driving. They could test their solution physically during test days on the circuit. They could test data on other days in a virtual environment with intensive coaching facilitated by RDW. Next year, a new group of students will build on the software that was developed by this year's participating students.