Nearly 800 students have registered to join Self-Driving Car Programming Contest

One month after the contest was launched, nearly 800 students (260 teams) from 32 universities nationwide have registered to participate in Digital Race 2017-2018 with the theme of Self-Driving Cars.

Ho Chi Minh City has registered the largest number of participants (117 teams), followed by Hanoi (102 teams) . Despite being organized in Da Nang for the first time, the competition has attracted 41 teams.

After careful consideration, , the organization committee has selected 205 teams to enter the qualifying round. All selected contestants will participate in a self-driving technology exploring program which is held by FPT this December in both 3 regions: North, Central and South of Vietnam.

In the qualifying rounds (university level), the organization committee will hold 10 rounds to find 20 best teams for the semi-final round. Then ten top teams of this round will qualify for, the final round.

Following Digital Race from the first days, Mrs. Le Thi Lan, Department of Computer Vision, MICA Institute, Hanoi University of Science and Technology affirmed: “Digital Race is actually useful for students. Students from different faculties such as IT, Electronics, Telecommunication and Mechatronics can work together to optimize the strength of each team member as well as of the whole team. Digital Race helps not only broaden students’ knowledge of image processing, programming, artificial intelligence but also develop their soft skills such as teamwork. The technology of Digital Race may be new in the world, but not too difficult for students to research and apply. I believe that Vietnamese students who are self-confident and have good knowledge will quickly learn new technology and apply it so as to achieve the best results in the contest”. She also said that teachers and professors were willing to accompany as well as give students technical and tactical support during the competition.

Mr. Ho Dang Duong from Da Nang University of Technology considers Digital Race as an important playground for student to satisfy their passion for technology. "This is an intellectual playground which will give student interesting explorations into technology, although the main goal is to learn and gain experience," said he.

Digital Race is expected to take place from October 2017 to April 2018. This is a self-driving cars programming contest for all university students nationwide. This year's theme is also more difficult than lastyear’s one. In the final round, contestants will have to program their cars in order that they can run in simulated outdoor lighting, detect traffic signs and make right/left turns.

The contest has the total award amount up to VND4 billion. The champion team will receive a total prize of VND450 million, including a one-week trip to Japan to experience and research on new technologies, and will be directly recruited by FPT Software.

All members of Top 20 will be sponsored by FPT Software to participate in a 10-week embedded systems training course with the value of USD2,000. Students who pass the final exam of the course will sign the contract to become official staffs at FPT Software.Last year, Digital Race 2016-2017 attracted more than 500 contestants from 26 universities nationwide. MTA Racer team from Military Technology Academy is the champion of Digital Race 2016-2017.