When dimunitive mean machines jostled for ace space

The racing car contest, organised by Freescale, an automotive technology company, witnessed the participation of 127 teams from 35 engineering colleges across the country, in the second edition of ‘Freescale Cup India’ at the Indian Institute of Science on Monday.

The participants were given a free vehicle kit and development tools required to build a model racing car based on a Freescale technology, four months prior to the contest.
(Each vehicle with a processor embedded onto a chip, along with a camera sensor attached to the front, costs more than Rs 15,000).

After installing the applications and modifying the vehicle in their own ways, and undergoing two months of rigorous testing, the teams fought it out in the final where the vehicles that automatically recognised the specially designed race track and clocked the fastest lap time won.

Vivek Tyagi, Country Sales Manager, Freescale, said:  “We provided the contestants the micro controller processor board and they get to keep the model kits for their future academic use. The same event has been conducted in China and Mexico for the past many years. While the event in China attracts 2,000 teams and is organised in an indoor stadium, the Indian students are still catching up.”

“The 32-bit microprocessor provides students of Embedded Engineering a scope to learn more than what the current Indian education system can provide,” adds Tyagi.
The winners were announced after a seven-hour contest and student groups from Sardar Vallabhai National Institute of Technology bagged the first and third positions. The model car of these teams finished the lap in 25.68 seconds and 34.49 seconds, respectively. The second place went to the students of Manipal Centre of Information Science who clocked 30.59 seconds.

Shabeer Ali, Rajendra Babu and Sneha Joseph, members of the Manipal team, who participated in the event for the first time say they are more than happy to have won the second place. “We are happy that we can keep the model car and the entire kit. This is not something that anybody teaches in our syllabus. We didn’t come here expecting or knowing anything. So, we are content,” said Shabeer.

The event was jointly organised by the Centre for Electronic Design and Technology from the Indian Institute of Science.