Autonomous Driving Technology Put to the Test in Virtual City... Hyundai Hosts 'Autonomous Driving Challenge'

AI Autonomous Driving Algorithm Competition

The largest autonomous driving competition in South Korea has taken place.

Hyundai Motor Group announced on September 30 that it held the finals of the second round of the autonomous driving competition for university students, the "2025 Autonomous Driving Challenge," at 'Factorial Seongsu' in Seongdong-gu, Seoul.

Hyundai Motor Group announced on the 30th that it held the finals of the second round of the autonomous driving competition "2025 Autonomous Driving Challenge" for university students at "Factorial Seongsu" in Seongdong-gu, Seoul. Hyundai Motor Company

This year, both the first and second rounds of the competition were conducted in a virtual simulator environment. Participating teams competed in artificial intelligence (AI) end-to-end (E2E) autonomous driving technology. This technology, which trains AI to respond to driving data and road traffic scenario situations, is a next-generation autonomous driving method that is drawing attention as a new trend, surpassing the conventional "rule-based autonomous driving."

Compared to the first round held at COEX in Seoul in March, the second round featured a more advanced development and evaluation environment, as well as increased mission difficulty.

The format changed from each team driving independently to complete missions, to all teams driving simultaneously to accomplish the tasks. In addition, the development environment shifted from a PC-based system to one based on the "NVIDIA Orin-X" system-on-chip (SoC), which is used in autonomous vehicles, maximizing the ease of applying E2E logic.

Hyundai Motor Group provided development funding and licenses for the "MORAI" simulator for autonomous driving logic development. Researchers from Hyundai Motor Company, Kia, and 42dot offered technical support to help teams enhance their algorithms. The virtual simulator used for the competition replicated the same environment as "K-City," the autonomous driving testbed in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.

The top six teams from the first round competed in the qualifiers, and among them, four teams-KAIST, UNIST, Chungbuk National University, and Hanyang University-advanced to the finals. In the finals, teams must pass through randomly designated locations within the driving course to reach the destination. The final rankings are determined by the total score, which combines completion points and penalties.

The winning team will receive a prize of 30 million won and an opportunity to visit China to observe autonomous driving trends. The second-place team will receive 20 million won, the third-place team 10 million won, the fourth-place team 5 million won, and the fifth and sixth-place teams 3 million won each. In addition, the teams placing first and second will be granted a special hiring benefit: exemption from the document screening stage when applying for research positions at Hyundai Motor Company, Kia, or the 42dot Autonomous Driving Group (AD Group).

Lim Eulgyo, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D Planning and Coordination at Hyundai Motor Company and Kia, stated, "This is a meaningful stage where domestic university researchers can broaden the scope of research in the field of AI end-to-end autonomous driving," adding, "We hope that the South Korean academic community will grow in line with global research trends and become leaders in the advancement of future autonomous driving technology."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.