‘Software, Start Your Engines’

The 2021 Indy Autonomous Challenge is a high-speed laboratory for advancing automated driving.

The Indianapolis 500 has long billed itself as “the greatest spectacle in racing,” but it's difficult to imagine that cars racing at 120 mph (193 km/h) or more around the fabled “Brickyard” - sans drivers - isn't going to be its own kind of spectacle. That's the intent for the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) race scheduled for October 23, 2021, when a field of driverless racecars competes at the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) for a $1 million first prize.

The IAC is more than spiritually related to the famous DARPA Grand Challenge initiated in the early 2000s by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). That pivotal event spurred interest in automated-driving technology. Similarly, the Indy competition also is not intended for professionals. Instead, it's aimed at global collegiate engineering-student teams to hone development of the sophisticated software required to extract maximum performance from a driverless racecar, one that's simultaneously maneuvering with other vehicles bent on the same objective.