These rules are prepared for the "AI Velocity Cup: F1Tenth Autonomous Racing Challenge". Rules are subject to change.
Date: 2024-07-31
Table of content
International F1TENTH Autonomous Racing Competition is a racing competition open to teams of all levels. Competing teams may consist of any number of members; however, each participant should be a member of only one team.
The competition is organized as an in-person competition.
Teams can register for the competition using the registration form (https://tinyurl.com/AI-Velocity-Cup).
The competition will comprise three parts – Inspection and Orientation, Time Trials and 2 Vehicle Head-to-Head race. Every participant must pass qualification and will be automatically registered to both races.
Teams registered to the in-person competition need to provide and build a F1TENTH car by themselves according to the constraints listed below. In addition, each team must have a unique vehicle (i.e., a research lab may not field six teams with one car).
To increase the quality of the future F1TENTH competitions, the winner of each race is encourage to publish the code of their algorithm under an open-source license in the F1TENTH repository on Github.
In order to better accomodate all participating teams, all teams should have at most 4 team members present at the race space (includes sideline and seating area) during the event. Teams with more than 4 members will be required to either register as separate teams or discard/cycle their members during the event.
The in-person competition distinguishes two vehicle classes: Restricted Class and Open Class.
Restricted Class allows only cars that meet the following constraints:
Open Class allows cars that do not fit into Restricted Class. These cars may compete, but they are not eligible for prizes, their ranking is kept separate, and you might not have any peers competing in the class. In addition, the following constraints are applied:
The competition will take place inside David Strong Building, University of Victoria. The characteristics of the environment where the track will be built are:
The purpose of the Inspection is to check that the hardware of the autonomous cars meets the competition requirements and the cars are not dangerous for the environment, opponents, and people.
The inspection of the vehicles is done on the first competition day in the morning.
The inspection is done by the race referees.
The inspection has to be completed before the Time Trials and after significant changes to the cars hardware or algorithms.
Touching means moving the object by less than 5 cm. Moving by greater distance is called Crashing.
Moving the track border by any distance is called Crashing.
The track will contain several checkpoints, marked with a line across the track. Starting line is not a checkpoint.
Time Trial is a race with a goal to drive through the designated track as fast as possible. The idea is to push the algorithms to their limits.
The race consists of two heats. Each heat lasts for 5 minutes, and the goal is to drive a single lap in as short time as possible and/or to drive as many complete laps as possible. Crashing and stopping the car does not pause the heat timer.
The heat sessions are split in two with a one one-hour practice session in between. The teams have to book a time slot in each session. The schedule of the sessions will be shared with the teams before the race.
Each team is provided two dedicated time slot for their vehicle to qualify. No time extensions are given and after the 5 minutes we move on to the next time slot and the next team. There will be 1-5 minutes of dedicated time to switch from one team to the next. If a team is not able to run the car in this dedicated time slot, the qualification phase is not passed for this team.
The teams are allowed to change the configuration of their algorithms in between the heats, and even during the heat. When the configuration is changed during the heat, the car must stand still. In other words, the teams cannot update the configuration on-line while the car moves.
The map (track layout) is known a priori and the track layout does not change over the whole competition. Keep in mind that cars crash into the walls and the layout of the track might slightly shift a little bit. Please consider this in your algorithms.
The final score for the qualification is two parts: Firstly, based on the ranking of the fastest laptimes you receive points. E.g. with 10 teams the fastest team receives 10 points, second fastest 9 points, third fastest 8 points …. and so on. Secondly, based on the number of consecutive uninterrupted laps, a ranking of the teams is created and therefore the teams receive points. E.g. with 10 teams the team with the most laps receives 10 points, second team 9 points, third team 8 points …. and so on. The final score is the sum of both scores. Note that the best lap times and number of laps has to be obtained from the same uninterrupted session.
Each vehicle must demonstrate that it can drive autonomously through a track without crashing.
The team must demonstrate that it is possible to trigger car emergency stop remotely.
Touching the border of the track or a static obstacle is not penalized. Excessive, repeated touching (up to the organizers) is considered a crash.
Upon crashing the track border or the static obstacle the team has to stop the car and move it (by hand or using the remote control) to the latest position before crash. After repairing the track and returning the obstacles to their appropriate locations, the race may continue. The time spent on moving the car to the checkpoint and repairing the track is considered the penalty.
Each team will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
There will be two results tables based on these criteria.
The Head-to-Head race is a race with two cars on the track at the same time.
The racetrack has the same layout as in the training and qualification sessions.
The algorithms must not intentionally hinder the opponent or perform any damage to it. Specifically, manoeuvres such as deliberate crowding of a car beyond the edge of the track or any other abnormal change of direction are strictly prohibited. The referees will have the final say in whether a driver is in violation of the rule.
The head-to-head race will be organized as a single-elimination knockout tournament with brackets seeded by results of the qualification. For example, with 8 teams, the bracket of the first round will be (#1 vs. #8, #2 vs. #7, #3 vs. #6, and #4 vs. #5).
Before the start of each head-to-head race, both teams will be tested for obstacle avoidance and are required to use the same code for the race. Any violations to this rule could result in disqualification of the violating team (up to the organizers).
One head-to-head race consists of two teams racing against each other. One race has a dedicated timeslot of around 10 minutes. If one team is not showing up in these 10 minutes and let their car race, the other team won. If at some point along the race a car is not able to drive anymore (e.g. hardware issue, software not running etc.) and the teams are not able to restart the car withing the 10 minutes, the other team wins the race. No time extensions are given and after the 10 minutes we move on to the next time slot and the next team.
Each of the competing cars starts at its own starting line. Starting lines will be located at the opposite parts of the track.
Overtaking may be carried out on either the right or the left.
As opposed to time trials, no reconfiguration is allowed during the race, except after the crash, as described below.
Ultimately, organizers reserve the right to assign blame in the case of vehicle collision in the head-to-head tournament.
Touching the border of the track or a static obstacle is not penalized. Excessive, repeated touching (up to the organizers) is considered a crash. (Same rules as for Time Trial.)
Touching the opponent is not penalized unless one of the cars significantly diverges from its expected trajectory.
Upon crashing the border of the track, the team has to fix the track and place the car on the side of the track at the place where the car first crashed the border. Then, the car can continue the race. During all of this, the opponent’s car must not be restricted by the team’s actions and the opponent is allowed to further race without stopping its car. The penalty is the time spent on fixing the track and placing the car.
Upon crashing the opponent, these steps are applied:
The virtual competition will be completely done in an simulation environment only and no hardware is involved.
This simulation environment is based on the AutoDrive Ecosystem. The F1TENTH virtual competition will be complete done in this environment only and teams need to submit their code in time to this platform.
The virtual competition will comprise two parts – Time Trials and 2 Vehicle Head-to-Head race. Every participant must pass the Time Trials and will be automatically registered to both races.
F1TENTH reserves the right to reject any submission that we deem illegal due to circumstances such as exploiting the simulation environment. Therefore their source code submission will be examined by the race stuarts after the race.
The map used for all the races (Time Trials, Head-to-Head) will be the same. In the Time Trials this map will have added obstacles for the obstacle avoidance task.