By Kimberly Mann Bruch —
Several students from the University of California San Diego TritonAI Team participated in the Autonomous Karting Series, taking first place in an autonomous go-kart competition of 10 teams. Held at Purdue University’s Grand Prix Track, the challenge brought together students from across the globe to compete in a series of events aimed at advancing technology for the commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles and the development of advanced driver-assistance systems to enhance safety and performance.
The TritonAI team, which included students from UC San Diego School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences (SCIDS) Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI) and the Jacobs School of Engineering, was mentored by Jack Silberman, who is a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and HDSI. The racing project was a part of the HDSI DSC190 Capstone class, which took place in Spring 2025.
“Our success at this event — placing first overall — opened a new vision for innovation within autonomous vehicle research,” Silberman said. “Our program here at HDSI is the first data science program in the world to have an autonomous car program and now we hope to continue and develop additional collaborations with companies such as Honda, BrainCorp, ShieldAI, WeRide, Qualcomm, DOT and Nissan.”
This year’s autonomous go-kart race was not the first for the data science and engineering students. The TritonAI team has participated in these autonomous go-kart races since the inaugural Grand Prix in 2021. Many of the students that worked on the autonomous kart are also part of the larger multi-institutional AI Racing Tech team, which develops and races a full-scale autonomous race car. In addition to UC San Diego, AI Racing Tech includes students from UC Berkeley, University of Hawai’i and Carnegie Mellon University.
In January, the AI Racing Tech team, including UC San Diego students team, also competed with a full scale autonomous race car at the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) and took first place in the passing competition. Last year, the team competed in the IAC and ended up taking second in the semi-finals and fifth overall.
Additionally, in 2021, data science and engineering students from UC San Diego partnered with University of Hawai’i students to compete in the first IAC full-size autonomous car race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Among those were HDSI Alumni Siddharth Saha and Raymond Song as well as Nicholas Preston, Winston Chou, Aryan Palaskar, Jeff Bratman and Moises Lopez-Mendoza, who recently graduated from the Jacobs School of Engineering.
That first full-scale race back in 2021 gave the team a taste of real racing. Nicholas Preston, an aerospace engineering alumnus of UC San Diego said that the experience was a chance of a lifetime.
“Getting the opportunity to run a race car at one of the most famous and prestigious racetracks in the world is an amazing experience to start with,” Preston said. “The fact that said race car is then autonomously driving on the edge of both the car and the software makes it even more special.”
As the project progresses, the team aspires to continue to cement UC San Diego as an impactful contributor to research throughout the realm of autonomous vehicle development.
