Indy Autonomous Challenge

Indy Autonomous Challenge

Logo of the first 2021 race
Country	United States Italy
Inaugural season	2021
Teams	9
Constructors	Dallara
Tyre suppliers	Bridgestone
Current champions	PoliMOVE Autonomous Racing Team
Official website	indyautonomouschallenge.com

The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) is the main and, as of July 2023, the only active racing series for autonomous race cars. The vehicles participating in the IAC are SAE level 4 autonomous as they are capable of completing circuit laps and overtaking manoeuvres without any human intervention.^[1]

Each team participating in the competition uses the same vehicle, a custom-built Dallara AV21 single-seater derived from their IL-15 model with the addition of all the sensors, actuators and computing hardware necessary for fully autonomous driving.^[2] The participating teams are constituted by university researchers by top universities worldwide, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, KAIST, Politecnico di Milano, TUM and ETH Zurich.

The first race took place on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in October 2021,^[3] after an initial period of simulator-only challenges,^[4] which started in November 2019 as a proving ground to allow the competing teams to demonstrate their ability to race autonomously before receiving the physical race car. Since then, the competition has raced in several notable oval circuits as Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, and in June 2023 in its first road course circuit, at the Monza Circuit.^[5]