Mkhitar Hayrapetyan visited NPUA to compliment the student team with successful Self-Driving Car Student Competition

On July 22, the RA Minister of High-Tech Industry Mkhitar Hayrapetyan visited the National Polytechnic University of Armenia (NPUA) to congratulate the student team for taking an honorable third place award at Self-Driving Car Student Competition during the American Control Conference 2024. The Competition was organized by Quanser Company. The team was formed at the NPUA Air Robotics Educational Research Center within the scope of cooperation of NPUA and Center for Scientific Innovation and Education (CSIE).

During his visit, Minister Hayrapetyan met with NPUA student team members Anna Beklaryan, Lusine Barseghyan and Vahagn Makaryan, who demonstrated the innovation of their project and presented the efforts that led to success.

Team leader and researcher Astghik Hakobyan shared the team's experience at the event. She described their challenges and achievements. The interlocutors discussed the possible directions of future cooperation to strengthen Armenia's representation at similar international events. They underscored the importance of engaging talents in high technologies.

Minister Hayrapetyan honored the team's dedication and enthusiasm for inspiring future generations of technologists and innovators in Armenia. He reaffirmed the Government's commitment to support initiatives promoting research, innovation and academic excellence in high technology.

The event was attended by NPUA Vice-Rector for science, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, Professor Ashot Khachatryan, NPUA Vice-Rector for International Processes and Reforms, Ph.D. associate professor Sargis Asatryants, Vice-Rector for pre-university education of NPUA, Ph.D. associate professor Elbak Elbakyan, Wilkins Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the Director of AVIATE Center of UIUC and scientific advisor of the National Academy of Sciences Naira Hovakimyan, Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Areg Danagoulian, Director of the Center for Scientific Innovation and Education Raffi Pazhjian, researcher Astghik Hakobyan, as well as representatives of academia and scientific research community.

The competition brought together 39 teams representing the world's top universities. And yet, only 11 of them passed the first round and presented themselves in Canada. Despite the challenges, the Armenian team headed to the top three from the first round and sang the national anthem in this remarkable conference.

During the competition, students explored advanced methods of self-driving and applied computer vision algorithms to solve the offered problems. The algorithms developed during the first round were incorporated on the virtual robot QCar, in the QLab virtual environment of the Quanser Company, and recorded the overtaking of the designated route within 31 seconds.

Further, during the second round in Canada, the same algorithm was applied to a real robot. While crossing the route, the algorithm applied to the robot well autonomously observed all the traffic rules, staying in the traffic lane.