BU F1TENTH AUTONOMOUS GRAND Prix

F1TENTH Autonomous Racing is a semi-regular competition organized by an international community of researchers, engineers, and autonomous systems enthusiasts. The BU F1TENTH Grand Prix is organized by faculties and students at Boston University. It is part of the Learning to Trust Autonomy Workshop. Participating teams of the BU F1TENTH Grand Prix will build a 1:10 scaled autonomous race car according to a given specification and write software for it to fulfill the objectives for the competition: Don’t crash and minimize laptime.

Boston University (BU) will host an in-person competition with physical cars in the form of the BU F1tenth Autonomous Grand Prix. Each team will bring their own F1TENTH car and write the software for their car. The teams have access to a detailed build manual and can use open-source software that helps them get started with the car. The organizers provide the race setup (rules, submissions, guidelines), the track, and related infrastructure and organize the race itself. For the competition, teams first take part in a qualification session in order to determine seeding. In the qualification session, teams compete in a time trial where they need to demonstrate that they are able to finish laps without colliding with the track bounds at run time. Afterwards, teams compete in a knockout phase in head-to-head racing in an intense battle with their autonomous driving algorithms. Since vehicles and hardware are standardized, teams must develop robust perception, planning, and control algorithms that can deal with the uncertainties of a new track and new competitors. The Grand Prix phase pits competitors against each other on the same track.