Chongqing- As one of the most eye-catching events during the 2020 Smart China Expo Online, the i-VISTA Autonomous Vehicle Grand Challenge began its intense competitions at the Lijia CAERI Industrial Park on Sept. 12.

The i-VISTA Grand Challenge has been successfully held and well perceived by the country’s top industry players for the last two years. And this year’s event sees a total of 19 professional teams and 22 individual contestants competing in its two main categories, Saturday’s autonomous vehicle challenges, and Sunday and next Monday’s ADAS challenges.

Contrary to the usual arrangement, the two most followed and popular competitions of the Smart Brain Autonomous Vehicle Challenge and the Virtual Simulation Autonomous Vehicle Challenge were staged on the first day of the event, placing the greatest ever pressure on the 20 competing teams.

Smart Brain Autonomous Vehicle Challenge

Following a strict process of preliminary selections, professional teams from Tsinghua University, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing Jiaotong University, as well as car manufacturers like JAC Motors made it to the final of the Smart Brain Autonomous Vehicle Challenge on Saturday.

The Smart Brain Autonomous Vehicle Challenge is sometimes also referred to as the Urban Traffic Scenario Challenge, which, as its name indicates, tests autonomous vehicles’ performance in the complicated urban traffic scenarios such as random traffic lights, sudden lane merging, ambulance avoidance, automated parking, and pedestrian jaywalking.

The race routes in the Lijia CAERI Industrial Park are especially of Chongqing characteristics, which features a lot of bridges, tunnels, flyovers, elevated platforms, and tortuous mountain roads. “This could easily be one of the most difficult autonomous vehicle challenges of all time,” said a director with the China Automotive Technology & Research Center’s Intelligent Connected Vehicles Project, citing it as the “world cup” in autonomous vehicle challenges.

Virtual Simulation Autonomous Vehicle Challenge

As a new competition item added to the autonomous vehicle challenges category under the 2020 i-VISTA Grand Challenge, the Virtual Simulation Autonomous Vehicle Challenge aims to test the vehicles’ safety levels and technical compliances.

Contestant vehicles were required to go through all 15 park scenarios set up in the Lijia CAERI Industrial Park and another 27 expressway scenarios simulating the Beijing section of the Yanchong Expressway.

Compared with the qualifying matches, the final is way more demanding and rigorous in that it needs more sophisticated algorithms and involves more complicated test scenarios. Performance in speed limit detecting, tunnel headlight switching, and automated overtaking capabilities are also tested in the Virtual Simulation Autonomous Vehicle Challenge.

“This autonomous vehicle challenge is particularly difficult, many of the test scenarios can’t be found in real-life situations that they have to be simulated virtually,” said Dr. Li Penghui, chief engineer of the Data Simulation Department under the China Automotive Technology & Research Center’s Intelligent Connected Vehicles Project.

5G technologies were also used during the 2020 i-VISTA Grand Challenge to ensure the smooth and interrupt-free flow of all competition items, with a fully customized network coverage from the wireless side, cable transmission side, to the 5G core side. A digital visualization interface featuring all-camera monitoring also made it possible for the data control center to provide live broadcast signals. Visitors can get access to the ultra-fast 5G network within the whole Lijia CAERI Industrial Park area and the Baiyun Lake area.

According to a time table provided by the organizing committee of the 2020 i-VISTA Grand Challenge, two more matches under the ADAS challenges category and another Commercialization Progress Challenge will be staged on Sunday and next Monday respectively, with the award ceremony scheduled near the end of the 2020 Smart China Expo Online.