A group of students, mentored by Prof. Ing. Carl James Debono, the Dean of the Faculty of Information & Communication Technology participated in the Bosch Future mobility challenge alongside other students. This challenge is an international technical competition for students, but it includes many other activities designed for tech enthusiasts and families as well.
The journey started in October 2020 with a submission of the project by the UM team (Drive UM) and the finals were held at the Bosch Engineering Center Cluj, Romania in September 2021. In total there were 78 teams and the University team placed 5th in the overall rankings.
The students had to develop AI algorithms so that the car could autonomously drive on a track developed by Bosch. This included keeping the car within the lanes, navigating curves, detecting traffic signs and observing the sign, parking of the car and avoiding any obstacles. The car was provided by Bosch and is of a scale of 1/10 of the actual car. The students were allowed to add further electronic components to improve the capability of the car while remaining within the strict given dimensions.
The students had the opportunity to get a first hand look at the difficulty of working with new technologies that have rather limited support using the software. The team spent hours working on object detection models, and gained a lot of knowledge on how to deal with low-power devices and the importance of in-depth research. During the project, the University of Malta team had to structure a well-thought-out plan and a detailed layout of the system's architecture. Setting goals and tasks for each member greatly improves the workflow and speeds up the overall development process.
Keith George Ciantar, a student and one of the Drive UM team members said “My experience in this challenge has definitely taught me A LOT. Firstly, controlling a small electric car requires a fine balance between how fast the car can go and how quickly the on-board devices can process the captured images. Going to Romania to compete in the finals was a very fun and insightful experience. I was impressed by the level of competition we faced and the amount of time and money that some teams had put in. The Bosch team was always helpful and accommodating, and made sure to help with any issues which we faced.”
Mr. Ciantar also explained the main challenges they had to face as he explains ” As the testing goes on , it gets slightly more complex, since the battery level is continuously dropping. This means that while tweaking the algorithms, it is quite common to get inconsistent results without changing the code. This is because setting a speed of 10 with a 100% battery will most likely not give the same output as when the battery is at 60%. For most of us coming from more software-based studies, this was somewhat of a new challenge which was rather interesting to deal with.”
Another team member, Keith Azzopardi said that “The entire competition experience was very fun as we had to combine our knowledge about both hardware and software and apply it to a challenging scenario which is as close as it gets to the real world. I think that participating in such competitions complements our studies very well, not only because it is an opportunity to apply the theory we learned but also because you get to practice time management etc. in the context of a team. The competition itself is very well organised and also serves as an opportunity to meet students and mentors with diverse backgrounds, so I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the field of autonomous vehicles.”
Are you interested in being part of the challenge for 2022? Visit the Bosch website for more information.