The 15th Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge concluded on Sunday in Changshu, east China's Jiangsu Province, with a team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) winning the championship, according to the Chinese Association of Automation, the event co-organizer.

This year's competition, themed "Advanced Autonomous Driving and Multi-Agent Embodied Interaction," focused on addressing real-world challenges such as handling unexpected situations in open and dynamic environments, understanding human-vehicle interactions, and facilitating embodied interactions among multiple intelligent agents for high-level autonomous vehicles.

The challenge is designed to test the capabilities of intelligent vehicles to achieve L4 high-level autonomous driving in complex environments, particularly with new types of traffic participants such as humanoid robots and quadruped robots. It aims to promote technological advancements and practical applications of intelligent driving vehicles in emerging traffic scenarios.

Organized by the information sciences department of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Association of Automation, with local government hosting the event, the competition featured 14 teams from universities across the country. Teams from Xi'an Jiaotong University, Tsinghua University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University won second and third prizes, respectively.

According to the organizers, this year's competition not only showcased the latest research progress in China's autonomous driving field but also provided a demonstration scenario for policy implementation, technological validation, and industrial collaboration. It further facilitated the deep integration of intelligent vehicles with smart cities and intelligent transportation systems.