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The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) is an annual international robotics competition for teams of undergraduate and graduate students. Teams design and build an autonomous ground vehicle capable of completing several difficult challenges. The competition is well suited to senior design “capstone” courses as well as extracurricular design projects.

The competition has taken place each year since 1993. The competition is normally held on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, although it has occasionally moved to other venues within the state of Michigan. Approximately 40 teams typically participate.

Competition Overview
The details of the competition change from year to year. In 2010 the competition included the following four events.


 * 1) Design Competition: The design competition includes a written design report, an oral presentation, and an examination of the vehicle.
 * 2) Autonomous Challenge: The autonomous challenge is the major event. Qualification for this event is required. A fully autonomous ground vehicle must navigate an outdoor obstacle course. The course consists of a lane painted with white or yellow lines on a grassy field. Obstacles come in a wide variety of shapes and colors including barrels, cones, saw horses, and posts. The vehicles often use a camera to detect the boundary lines and a laser rangefinder to detect obstacles, although a variety of other approaches have been used.
 * 3) Navigation Challenge: This event requires the vehicle to travel autonomously from a specified starting point to a sequence of destinations specified by latitude and longitude. Qualification for this event is also required. Various obstacles are placed around the course including a fence with a randomly relocated opening.
 * 4) JAUS Challenge: The JAUS challenge is optional. This challenge requires a vehicle to demonstrate compatibility with the JAUS (Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems) standard by receiving and responding to a specified list of JAUS commands from the judges.

Purpose of the Intelligent Ground Vehicles Competition
The IGVC offers a design experience that is at the very cutting edge of engineering education. It is multidisciplinary, theory-based, hands-on, team implemented, outcome assessed, and based on product realization. It encompasses the very latest technologies impacting industrial development and taps subjects of high interest to students. Design and construction of an Intelligent Vehicle fits well in a two semester senior year design capstone course, or an extracurricular activity earning design credit.



The deadline of an end-of-term competition is a real-world constraint that includes the excitement of potential winning recognition and financial gain. Students at all levels of undergraduate and graduate education can contribute to the team effort, and those at the lower levels benefit greatly from the experience and mentoring of those at higher levels. Team organization and leadership are practiced, and there are even roles for team members from business and engineering management, language and graphic arts, and public relations. Students solicit and interact with industrial sponsors who provide component hardware and advice, and in that way get an inside view of industrial design and opportunities for employment.

Sponsors
The competition is often sponsored by the United States Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) in addition to other sponsors.