This June, the KAIT Foundation launched a STEM mentoring program for middle school students as the main sponsor, along with the Korea International Exhibition Center (KINTEX), and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC). MBC will be broadcasting two rounds of competitions between autonomous driving racecars built by participating students with the help of program mentors who are engineering students from Seoul National University.
The program, which will be held online, will teach middle school students how to use Python for autonomous driving racecars over a two-month period beginning in June and based on the MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute programs. Four student groups from Seoul National University have been recruited to mentor contestants in the program: STEM (SNU Tomorrow’s Engineers Membership), Sigma Intelligence, Zero, and Satellite Studio.
The program is open to any middle school students who are interested in participating and sponsors will be providing all materials for teams, including materials for the 40 finalist teams to build their robotic racecars. There are two rounds of competition: the first is a virtual competition in August in which teams will participate in a virtual autonomous driving racecar competition broadcast by MBC, and the second will be an in-person event for the 40 teams selected from the first round to race their autonomous driving racecars at Cheong Wa Dae, the Korean Blue House, in November 2021.
Over 70 teams have already entered the program, with more than 200 middle students registered on the first day it launched on June 1st.
Since the challenge takes about 4 weeks to complete, students can continue to register for the program throughout June and July to submit their autonomous driving racecar entries before the first virtual competition round in August. The program will be run in Korean, but students can participate from anywhere in the world since it’s being held online.
Follow along as the 70 teams make progress on their autonomous driving racecars and learn more about our talented university student mentors from Seoul National University on YouTube by clicking the icon below!
