Overview
At the 2026 Fira Autonomous Car competition, our team won first place across all three categories: Race, Urban Driving, and the United Driving technical challenge.
Race tested raw autonomous speed and precision navigation on a closed circuit.
Urban Driving required the car to handle complex real-world-style scenarios like intersections, traffic signs, and routing decisions.
United Driving was the most technically demanding event.
There was only one round, with three hours of prep time, and it required live international collaboration: our car navigated a street course while reading posted directional signs.
As it moved, it wirelessly transmitted the decoded directions to our partner team from Malaysia.
Their car then drove through the same streets relying solely on the navigation data we sent.
The challenge demanded reliable wireless communication, accurate sign recognition, and tight real-time coordination with a team we had never trained alongside.
Winning all three categories, including the unique United Driving challenge, validated both the robustness of our computer vision pipeline and our ability to perform under international competition pressure.
A full paper detailing our technical strategy is currently in preparation and will be published soon.
What I Learned
- Built a competition-grade autonomous driving system capable of withstanding the various challenges of highway and urban driving
- Developed robust sign recognition and execution able to handle the noise of a foreign location and environmental constraints
- Implemented a network based instruction relay system, allowing our car to decode posted signs and transmit navigation data to a follower vehicle one step behind
- Collaborated with an international team (Malaysia) to complete a joint challenge requiring full trust in both systems without prior joint testing
- Performed under international competition pressure with no margin for hardware or software failure across all a full week of events
Gallery
Team
Competition Scenario
Presentation