Mini smart cars hit the track at Imagine RIT

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Michelle Cometa

“Intelligent” cars will be on display and competing at the Freescale Cup East Coast Challenge, new this year at Imagine RIT. The cars will be required to complete a winding track in the best times to win the event.

Student-designed “intelligent” cars will be featured in the Freescale Cup East Coast regional and USA final challenges at the upcoming Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival.

This marks the second time RIT has hosted the Freescale Cup East Coast Challenge, and the first time the challenge is part of the Imagine RIT festival. There will be 28 collegiate teams participating, including RIT, the University of Rhode Island, Penn State University and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Students from RIT’s computer engineering department will field 14 race teams.

The student teams build, program and race a model car around a track using technology similar to the sophisticated electronic sensors, embedded software and processors being incorporated into today’s vehicles, or “smart cars.”

Winning teams from earlier regional events from the West Coast and Central North America will participate later in the day against the East Coast winners. These final matches will determine the university teams that will represent North America at the Worldwide Freescale Cup event in Erlangen, Germany, in September. In last year’s international finals, RIT sent one of its teams to the championship event at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea.

The competition-exhibit will be located in the Clark Gymnasium, part of RIT Central.