News

First Unmanned Traffic Jam and 60 Minutes to Win: the Results of the Up Great “Winter City” contest have been summed up

In the suburbs of Moscow, the final tests of the technology competition Up Great “Winter City” completed. StarLine team from St. Petersburg showed the best result during the first Russian mass drone race in winter conditions. The car was able to overcome the most difficult city route of 50 km in just 4 hours — taking into account the accrued penalty minutes for traffic violations.

Up Great technology competition “Winter City” is held by RVC, the Skolkovo Foundation, and ASI and is aimed at finding breakthrough solutions in the field of uncrewed vehicles. The task of the competition is to create and demonstrate an unmanned vehicle capable of moving around the city in the conditions of the Russian winter at the level of an average driver.

The competition received more than thirty applications from various teams from all over Russia. In the final mass, Five teams took part: NSTU (Nizhny Novgorod), StarLine (St. Petersburg), Auto-RTK (Taganrog, Kursk), Winter City MADI (Moscow) and BaseTracK (Moscow). At the test site, the conditions of a real urban environment are simulated: the movements of pedestrians and other cars were recreated, traffic lights were installed, regulated and unregulated intersections, a railway crossing, and a tunnel were simulated.

During the tests, the teams went to the start twice: the first race was interrupted due to congestion that arose on the highway as a result of a stop on the lane of one of the participants. After the second attempt, the StarLine team managed to reach the end of the competition route. The drone covered a distance of 50 km in 2 hours and 47 minutes. However, another 73 penalty minutes were added to the final result for violations of traffic rules, the most frequent of which was driving against a red traffic light. According to the conditions of the “Winter City”, in order to overcome the technological barrier, the total travel time of the route should not have exceeded 3 hours.

The final of the competition was organized in partnership with MosTransProekt, which prepared a digital map and a system for monitoring the movement of vehicles of finalists at the training ground.

The partners of the final also became the Vokord company, which developed complexes for controlling the speed and pass of pedestrians. The Centre provided the work of the identification system for suppressing radio signals at the landfill for Digital Control Technologies of the Institute of Information Systems of the GUU.