The Intelligent Model Car Competition (IMCC) of
China is an annual collegiate contest where student
teams design, build, and race a model car around a
track, and the fastest car that completes the track
without failure wins [1]. The IMCC is in collaboration with
the global NXP Cup Challenge, which was formerly
known as the Freescale Cup Challenge until the acquisition
of Freescale Semiconductor Inc. by NXP Semiconductors
[2]. Creating this smart, autonomous car requires students
to develop the hardware and software of motor control to
propel and steer their model cars. It provides a collaborative,
competitive, and hands-on way for students to learn
about and make a synergistic use of theories and techniques
from undergraduate engineering studies, such as
sensing and control, circuit design and implementation,
and embedded system and software programming. The
first competition, formerly known as the Smart Car Race,
began in 2003 in South Korea with 80 student teams. Since
then, the NXP Cup has expanded to China, India, Malaysia,
Latin America, North America, and Europe, engaging
hundreds of schools and tens of thousands of students a
year [2], [3].
China started its nationwide college-level smart car race
in 2006. It has undergone a rapid growth since then and
has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. The challenges
and ingenuity posed by this competition has attracted an
increasing number of students year by year. As shown in
Figure 1, participation has risen from about 112 teams of
57 colleges in 2006 to over 2,000 teams of more than 400
colleges in recent years. For the past five years, more than
30,000 students have attended the contest annually; and so
far this decade-long race has engaged more than 150,000
students in total, providing them a valuable hands-on educational
experience of engineering.
As members of the organizing committee of the IMCC, in
this article we provide an overview and highlights of the competition
tasks and rules, the role that signal processing plays, and
the curricula that is built on the competition.
Motivation of a nationwide engineering competition The launch of the IMCC was supported by the Ministry of Education
of China and its Committee of Education Instruction of
Automation Specialty. A main motivation to launching the
competition was that the engineering curricula
at the college level were too theoretical
and generally too slow to catch up to the fast
pace of the contemporary technological
development. As a result, students tended to
focus more on test-oriented skills, and did
not pay enough attention nor had enough
hands-on opportunities to solve real-world
engineering problems in a team setting; they
would lack curiosity and interest and were
not sufficiently motivated to learn and innovate.
These problems are not unique in China, as the higher education
in engineering in many other countries around the world
have faced similar challenges.
The NXP-sponsored model car competition helps address this
problem and bring hands-on engineering education to many college
campuses around the world. The IMCC in China has several
notable characteristics, including the competition setup, the
rules, and the evaluation criteria that will be discussed later in this article. It has attracted an overwhelming
number of students over the past
decade, and its scale is now the largest
in the world. What initially began as one
competition category has now expanded
to six, and the competition tasks have
been diversified. Each category has challenges
that are suitable for students at a
different stage in their college study, so
that students ranging from freshmen to
seniors can all participate. Along with
the IMCC, a large number of microcontroller
unit (MCU) teaching labs, textbooks,
and innovation training centers
have been developed in many universities.
The development of such educational
material and infrastructure have
enabled and expanded hands-on training
for engineering students nationwide.
Tasks and rules of the model car competition
All racing teams use a standard kit of model car designated
by the organizing committee. Team members are required to
design and develop their own hardware and software for their
cars [4], [5]. As mentioned previously, each
finished model car must be capable of selfnavigating
along a challenging racetrack as
fast as it can. The teams will be ranked
according to the time taken by the model
car to complete one round of the racetrack.
Only undergraduate students are permitted
to participate in this nationwide competition
in China. Each team is allowed to
have up to three students and no more than
two faculty advisors. Typically, as shown in
Figure 2, an annual competition lasts ten months as an extracurricular
activity, from launching in the previous November to
the division competition in July, and to the final race in August.
Early rounds of the competition are carried out in eight
racing divisions covering different geographic areas in China.
The top teams from each race division are qualified for the
final race. During the final race, speed-based race sessions are
held in which the time for each finalist car to complete one round of the racetrack is used to rank the teams; in addition, an
open-ended competition is held concurrently, with innovation
themes related to future industrial intelligent cars to encourage
students to develop creative ideas and implementations.
Basic elements of the racetrack With the exception of a beacon-based sensing category to
be discussed later in this section, the racetracks are composed
of several kinds of elements: straight sections, curved
sections, crossroads, hills, and roadblocks
(see Figure 3). The characteristics of the
racetrack and its elements are given in the
rules released at the launch of the competition.
A detailed graph of the racetrack
is revealed to the teams onsite right
before the start of the competition. The
sensing and control algorithms embedded
in the race cars are expected to work
with all these elements and different combinations of them.
Competition categories
To enable self-navigation of model cars, different kinds of
sensors are explored to capture position signals for further
processing. Based on the sensor types and race tasks, the
competition is divided into several categories that have different
levels of technical challenge, as illustrated in
Figure 4. The basic categories only require some elementary
knowledge of signal processing, control, and circuits,
thus allowing younger undergraduate students to participate;
on the other hand, the advanced and creative categories
may use the technical knowledge and skills from
students’ design training or capstone projects. The wide
variety of categories gives students an opportunity to participate
in several competitions during their college career,
as they grow in knowledge, experience, and maturity. In
what follows, we briefly review the characteristics of each
competition category.
Signal processing techniques used in the competition There are many different technologies used in a model car to
compete in the respective category [6], and signal processing
is one of the key components. Students receive hands-on
training and strengthen their understanding of signal processing
through the competition.
Curricula development based on the competition An important goal of the IMCC is to integrate the learning of
multidisciplinary knowledge and the training of comprehensive
abilities important to engineering professionals
through the process of building and racing
model cars. As mentioned earlier, the respective
expertise involved include analog/digital
electronics, embedded system, electronic
design automation, control engineering, signal
processing, pattern recognition, and more.
Figure 16 illustrates the overall process for
students to attend the competition, together with the respective
disciplines supporting the different tasks in the competition.
After a decade of annual intelligent car competitions in
China, a total of 176 practical training centers have been
set up in 132 colleges across the country, and 115 courses
have been developed or redesigned in Chinese universities.
More than 36 textbooks have been
published with different focuses and
scopes, providing guidance on the core
knowledge and skills to students who are
interested in participating in the race car
competition, or simply for a fun handson
extracurricular practice. In addition,
a large number of technical reports on
the successful approaches in the previous competitions
have been archived, from which new students can gain
insights on the essential functional blocks and the associated
circuitries.
Furthermore, an excellent group of faculty members
and instructors nationwide have served as mentors to
guide student teams. They provide guidance and technical
resources to students, while leaving students room to think
independently, make design decisions, and implement
the designs. When students encounter problems in hardware
or software design and testing, mentors can guide
them to troubleshoot the problems. They can also advise
students to evaluate the possible outcomes
of a design decision. With help
from these mentors, students can learn
how to balance analysis and experimentation,
which helps enhance their
theoretical understanding and practical
execution capabilities. Also, mentors
usually discuss and summarize with
their students the experiences and lessons learned after
each competition.
Closing remarks
The IMCC in China has received many awards and recognitions
in recent years. By providing college students and
programs with an engaging way to learn/teach, this annual
competition has built a strong reputation and fostered interactions and collaborations with
many organizations. The industrial sponsor,
Freescale Semiconductor, which
merged with NXP, has enthusiastically
supported the competition since 2006.
More than 150,000 students have attended
the competition and flourished be -
cause of it. An overwhelming amount of
positive feedback from student participants has been
received. The IMCC has provided students with an opportunity
to learn multiple engineering disciplines, most notably
electrical and computer engineering and mechanical
engineering, and put them into a synergistic use. The
IMCC helps students strengthen communication and teamwork
skills and inspires them to pursue engineering careers
and become future innovators.
The competition has successfully met the educational
goals originally set by the administrators and sponsors. To
ensure its continued success, we are working on addressing
several newly emerging issues. For example, several competition
categories that use optic sensors to detect the road have
seen a nontrivial amount of requirements for the competition
conditions for the model cars to work well, and this added
an extra burden to the onsite event organization. Also, as the
number of teams increases significantly, the cost of organizing
the race also increases. To overcome these difficulties,
the competition tasks and rules need to be revised periodically.
Another new trend with the help of the Internet is the
possibility to build some standard competition platforms,
which allow students to download their software into their
model car remotely, facilitating their participation of the primary
competition.
The contents and formats of the IMCC should adapt with
new technological advancement. The state-of-the-art technologies
and the advanced educational concepts rejuvenate the
competition, supporting engineering students to develop their
interests and embark on their professional careers.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank our colleagues on the IMCC committee,
including Jingchun Wang, Kaisheng Huang, and Ming
Zeng, for their collegial efforts during the organization of the
competition and the suggestions in conceiving the competition
setup and rules. This work was supported by the National
Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center Program,
National Special Fund for Improving Basic Education Conditions
and NSFC the National Science Foundation of China
(NSFC grant 91420203).
