Self Driving Challenge - Edition 2025

With the Self Driving Challenge (SDC), the RDW is offering young talent the opportunity to further develop their skills in the field of smart mobility. This is a unique project in which student teams compete with each other by driving their autonomous vehicle trough a set of challenges on a track that represent real-world driving scenario's.

The Self Driving Challenge is an ongoing yearly event since 2019, with the goal of gaining knowledge about on-board decision-making technology including the integration of Artificial Intelligence technology, software engineering and control algorithms. Each year a goal for the challenge is set and competing student teams are tasked to develop algorithms and software for their vehicle to best achieve this goal. Previous challenges included driving in a simulation environment, driving on a real race track and developing own autonomous vehicle to complete a set of challenges.

Edition 2025

The challenge will be set-out on the RDW Test Centre in Lelystad (TCL). Starting in February 2025, teams have the opportunity to analyse, record and test their project every week. In June 2025, an exciting final event will be organised where all teams will demonstrate their abilities in front of a public audience and the winner of the Self Driving Challenge 2025 will be decided upon. Teams will be able to participate in either a 'closed category' or an 'open category'.

The RDW will provide the kick-off, webinars, technical information, testing-days and the final race event. The educational institutions are responsible for the necessary resources, supervision and guidance for their participating teams.

You can find more information here.

Challenges

The University of the North will participate in the ‘open category’ where we have own developed autonomous car in-house (based on a Twizy car, provided, developed and sponsored by robotTUNER BV). The RDW will provide the kick-off, webinars, technical information, testing-days and the final race event. The basic challenges can be read at SDC 2025 - Open Category.

Team of supervisors:

• Bayu Jayawardhana (main contact for RUG), Saeed Ahmed, Kerstin Bunte (University of Groningen)
• Ronald van Dijk (main contact for Hanze), Rix Groenboom (Hanze University of Applied Sciences)
• Erik Delger (Noorderpoort, main contact)

The final team composition, along with the shadow team, will be announced in the 3rd week of January 2025.