Visiting Udacity’s Self-Driving Car Training Center in China

A pioneering training center, developed jointly with Tier IV and PIX, provides an opportunity for students to work in teams on their own self-driving car.

Last week I had the privilege of visiting Udacity’s Self-Driving Car Training Center in Guiyang, China.

This is a facility that our colleagues on Udacity’s China team have developed jointly with Tier IV (the creators of Autoware) and PIX (an autonomous vehicle startup in Guiyang). The center provides an opportunity for students from all over China to come together and work in teams for a week on their own self-driving car. Over the course of the program, they install all of their own software and get the car driving itself around a test track, stopping at traffic lights and stop lines.

This is such an amazing program!

Bringing together teams of students to work in-person on a self-driving car is a tremendous experience that was exceptionally valuable for the students at the Training Center.

Watching and participating with students working on self-driving cars in western China, I was reminded of how huge the talent pool is, all over the world, for people who want to build autonomous vehicles.

Check out this video of one of the team’s getting their car to drive!

As we continue to move forward into the future of autonomous transportation, opportunities to experience firsthand the migration from theory to practice—and from online to on the street—will become ever more valuable to then engineers engaged in making this future a reality. I am excited that Udacity’s China team is helping to make this kind of experience possible for aspiring autonomous engineers, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to watch it all in action.

Are you interested in joining the next generation of talent building the future of autonomous transportation? Visit our School of Autonomous Systems today!