Self-driving, Hack, Race and Have Fun in May
Sam was soldering a small PCBA on the industrial workbench. He was one hundred percent focused. Around him there were a lot of electronics, tools and various gadgets. A tall man with full beard and ponytail hair walked towards him, holding a round green metal object in his left hand. Then they began talking, moving and tinkering with the small components on the desk. Beside them, there was a small group of people, standing next to a raw chassis and looking at a computer screen, which displayed some codes and diagrams. The one with glasses started to talk about the software-debugging stuff with strong Japanese accent. He was Shunya from Nagoya University. They discussed and frowned, then a sense of enlightenment appeared on their faces.
Mario and Pier-Marc sat at another desk. They whispered a bit in French (obviously it was not English) and went directly to a brand new white car by the side of the stacked raw chassis. They got into the car and installed several electronic boards onto the rear view mirror. Mario’s head reflected the warm light from top. Pier-Marc was an agile man. He sat in the driver’s seat and cut a wire beneath the glove compartment within seconds, after which some programs started running on Mario’s computer.
Rays of sunshine shedding into the factory-tansformed office, the whole space looked spacious and broad. There were people walking around now and then, busy with paper or computer on hand for certain tasks. Opposite to the car area was a large green screen with a person performing the traffic command gestures. Ten meters away an India guy was doing some instructions and recorded the images on his computer. At another corner of the space, a group of people were writing codes and uploading to Github.
For the past five days, they were intensely discussing, talking, planning, doing hands-on work, and writing codes. There were here to build two self-driving cars in five days. “DIY Robocars: Move-it Hackathon” stickers were everywhere around the space. 20+ global engineers from 12 countries gathered here for five days to communicate, hack and build self-driving cars onsite in C-Zone Hackspace, Guiyang, China. They are PhDs, engineers, hackers from top universities, institute, self-driving companies etc.. To them, it was not just a hackathon, but also a feast to get down to real hacking and have fun. “I think it was a chance to meet people from all around the world. These were really amazing people” said Laura Lindzey, software engineer from Caltech and early participant of DARPA Grand Challenge.
Now the Organizer PIX Moving is holding the second hackathon in May, DIY Robocars KuaiKai, a networking Meetup and fun race for global self-driving engineers, students, and hobbyists. This time it’s more appealing. Besides the hacking, networking and building, there will be self-driving race for both full-sized and small-sized cars, which means participants can have fun racing when they finish setting up and testing their algorithms as well as software. There will be prize for the racing session as a bonus to make it a bit more “spicy”.
DIY Robocars KuaiKai provides car platforms equipped with computing platform, sensors, and by-wire control support for self-driving engineers, and also closed urban roads for test and racing. Theoretically, participants can just save their algorithms to the flash disk and then are good to go for the racing. Hobbyist engineers without too much experience on the full-sized self-driving vehicle can choose to participate the small-sized car onsite racing on the indoor racetrack.
Some details of DIY Robocars KuaiKai
Hackathon Categories
I. Full-sized Car Onsite Hacking and Test: Car platform onsite is already equipped with self-driving engineering support. Participates come with their self-driving software and algorithms onsite to test and race for self-driving skills such as obstacle avoidance and S-bend etc.
II. Small-sized Car Onsite Hacking and Test: Wheel to Wheel Tournament. Either hack and race with participant’s own car or the standard small-sized car provided onsite.
III. Remote Racing: Coming Soon (not released yet)
Prize Pool: from $1000 USD to $100,000 USD, and also Udacity Self-driving NanoDegree Program
Hackathon Date
Full-sized Car Onsite Test and Racing: May 20th-26th
Small-sized Car Onsite Test and Racing: May 25th-26th
Hackathon Location
Guiyang, Guizhou, China ( flights reimbursement and free accommodation & meals)
Apply and check more details on the hackathon website page:
