When we finally got to MIT, we were given the final track. It was huge
and took up an entire ice rink!
The race course required all the skills we built throughout the summer, having many components needing open CV, and we decided to use ROS to connect and create nodes, notably our safety controller. The course had lots of challenges which testing our programming to the limits!
Another absolutely amazing thing about Beaverworks was that every day we went to lectures by specialists in various fields. From a professor at MIT teaching neurotechnology to an engineer at Google with their Wamyo project (autonomous car) to the vice president of one of the sponsor, Ratheon. Every talk never failed to amaze us in new amazing areas of technology.
On race day, our car competed as one of 15 in time trials and a Grand Prix (final crazy race). You can see a video of the final race.
Final Race Car Grand Prix – Time Index 3h 53m.
http://web.mit.edu/webcast/beaverworks/sum2018/
We were thrilled to end up 5th overall!
Our team made tons of friends from all around the United States as well as a few teams from Mexico. Everyone there was passionate about science and technology and it was amazing to be surrounded by all those amazing people. We got to tell so many programming jokes. As Ines remarked “I have found my people”.
