Auburns students bring autonomous Indy car to the Rocket City

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) - Students from Auburn University came to the Rocket City to show off their new, fully autonomous Indy car.

The students used computers and sensors which means it does not need a driver. The car will brake, throttle and steer on its own. The sensors can even detect other cars on the track as it races to avoid crashing.

Team Leader Stephanie Meyer says the car needs to be able to compute hundreds of things every second.

“As soon as we either get close to the edge of the track and need to make some severe changes or, much more common[ly], we come up on another racecar, well that’s when the system really starts kicking in,” Meyer said. “We have to see where that other car is, see how fast it’s going, try to determine how it’s going to move in the near future and determine what we need to do to get around it.”

The team races other autonomous Indy cars across the country. So far the team has competed at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway and the Las Vegas Motor Speedway as part of the Indy Autonomous Challenge.

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