CHANGSHU, China (Reuters) — The 2017 China Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge opened Saturday in Changshu City of east China’s Jiangsu Province, attracting 25 teams from famous universities, scientific research institutions and companies nationwide.
After various competitions in nine consecutive years, the annual event has become the highest-level competition for driverless intelligent vehicles with the largest number of competing teams in China.
The competitors this year are required to finish a road test and an off-line test. The road test will examine the driverless vehicles’ safety, comfort, agility and intelligence. The off-line test will check out the vehicles’ basic cognitive ability by simulating actual road environment.
“One thing is that we have made the traffic environment more dynamic. In the previous competitions, only driverless vehicles were in the test environment. However, this time, we have invited more than 20 experienced drivers from driving schools to join the test together with the driverless vehicles. They will overtake driverless vehicles, or drive slowly and force the driverless vehicles to change lanes,” said Wang Feiyue, deputy chairman and general secretary of Chinese Association of Automation.
First held in 2009, China Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge has attracted many major universities and scientific research institutions involved in the research of driverless intelligent vehicle to participate, significantly promoting China’s research and development in this field.
