Kookmin University (President Jeong Seung Ryul) hosted the ‘Virtual AutoRace 2025’ competition on Monday, August 18, as part of the Ministry of Education's Advanced Field Innovation Convergence University Project.

The Future Automotive Business Division of Kookmin University's Innovation Convergence College, which organized this competition, prepared a contest to develop autonomous vehicles capable of performing driving missions in a virtual environment, including road navigation, obstacle recognition, and traffic light detection. This aims to cultivate talent who will play a pivotal role in developing new technologies for the autonomous vehicle sector. Through this, students can experience the process of programming and verifying core autonomous vehicle technologies—perception, decision-making, and control algorithms—under conditions simulating real-world environments. Additionally, they can learn various practical programming skills essential for future autonomous driving engineers.

Now in its fourth year, this competition saw 37 teams comprising 150 students from six participating universities (Keimyung University, Daelim University, Sun Moon University, Ajou University, Inha University, Chungbuk National University) within the Kookmin University Innovation Convergence College Future Automotive Consortium apply to participate. Following preliminary presentation evaluations, 26 teams with 112 students advanced to the finals. For the finals, participating students received training during the summer vacation on autonomous driving fundamentals, ROS programming, simulation usage, sensor data processing, and controller design. They then spent approximately six weeks developing autonomous driving algorithms within the virtual simulation environment used for the competition. 

Professor Lee Su Won of Kookmin University, who organized the competition, stated, “This competition was prepared to present a very high-level mission requiring not only lane recognition-based path following technology using cameras but also SLAM technology utilizing LiDAR sensors.” He added, “Nevertheless, seeing many teams successfully complete all missions demonstrates that the technical level of participating students improves year by year, indicating a very bright future for domestic autonomous driving technology.” 

Additionally, Professor Shin Sung Hwan, Director of the Business Unit at Kookmin University, remarked, “I am very proud of the excellent results achieved by the students. I hope this competition will foster many outstanding students who can contribute to the future automotive field.” He added, “I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Kang Yeon Sik, Professor Lee Su Won, Professor Lee Seung Mok, Wego Robotics Co., Ltd., and MORAIE Co., Ltd. for their efforts in preparing for the competition.” 

Following this competition, Kookmin University's Innovation Convergence College Future Automotive Business Unit plans to host a real-world autonomous driving competition based on CO-SHOW scale cars in November. Through this follow-up event, students are expected to gain experience with the differences between virtual and real environments, learn advanced autonomous driving algorithms, and obtain opportunities to directly apply them to real-time control.