After earning second place in 2024, a team of students from York University's Lassonde School of Engineering returned to the Control Conference Self-Driving Car Student Competition - and this time claimed first place.
The Self-Driving Car Student Competition is an annual opportunity for student researchers from around the world to apply their critical thinking skills and solve technical challenges faced by autonomous vehicles.
Close up of Team FullThrottle's car.
This year, seven Lassonde students competed as team FullThrottle from the Spacecraft Dynamics Control and Navigation Laboratory: PhD students Hunter Schofield, Hao Wang, Yida Zang; MSc students Hao Zang, Ahmed Etman, Ali Abosaad; and third-year undergraduate Larissa Singh.
Teams were tasked with developing an autonomous taxi system that could navigate a circuit simulating a city, arriving at requested pick-up and drop-off points.
Team FullThrottle earned the top spot by building a solution that safely and efficiently completed multiple passenger pick-ups and drop-offs within five minutes, while navigating traffic elements such as stop signs, construction zones and lane boundaries without any failures. The team edged past the second-place team from the Czech Republic by completing nine customer pick-ups and drop-offs within the competition's time limit.
The high-pressure environment was welcomed by the team as a test of their programming and problem-solving skills.
"One of the most exciting parts of this whole experience was getting to compete against some of the top teams from around the world," says Singh. "It was such an incredible opportunity to be in that environment, surrounded by like-minded people who were just as passionate about autonomous vehicles as we were."
Team FullThrottle's car demonstrating obedience for strict traffic rules.
The experience built on the hands-on learning opportunities available at Lassonde, where students apply technical knowledge to real-world challenges in robotics, AI and autonomous systems.
"This project was a great hands-on experience with a real autonomous system that provided us all with a lot of opportunity to learn about both hardware and software," says Schofield.
Professor Jinjun Shan, who guided the team, echoes that. "What I'll remember most is what we gained experientially. We learned how to communicate, trust each other's expertise and pull together under pressure," he says. "Most importantly, we learned how to be problem-solvers. Textbook theory is one thing, but applying it to a real, unpredictable challenge is where the true learning happens."
For the students, the experience also reinforced some members' career aspirations in autonomous systems, giving them insight into the potential impact of their work.
"This type of work has direct applications to industry, with many big companies such as Waymo and Tesla pursuing automated taxi services," Schofield says. "Our job as researchers is to prove the safety of these systems. To secure a larger segment of the market, these companies will need to explore similar safety-driven proof-of-concept implementations."
Guided by Professor Jinjun Shan, the team plans to refine their controller, improve performance in complex environments and return to defend their title in next year's competition. He doesn't accept that as a given after this year. "This win didn't come easy. It was born from countless days in the lab, working together to solve one seemingly impossible problem after another," he says. Still, winning isn't everything. "We are incredibly happy to win this championship - but we're even prouder of the growth, the skills and the camaraderie we built to get here."
This story was originally featured in YFile, York University's community newsletter.
