“We are very satisfied to win because we worked a lot for this project – on vacation, at the weekend… It takes a lot of time to work in this project, so it is very impressive that we can win. We are very grateful!”

"I like most at NXP Cup to connect with other people in Europe, to compare with each other – it is cool that so many people are here. This is most important for us because we work on this project all around the year. So that we can talk with each other is important for us”, said the winners of the EMEA NXP Cup 2019, the team ARCAR1 from Switzerland.

With the motto “The winner takes it all” the members of the team ARCAR1 won a trip to one of the biggest NXP-owned trade shows: NXP Connects in Santa Clara (US), June 12 and 13. NXP Semiconductors will fly the NXP Cup EMEA champions out to the show, where they can be part of the industry ecosystem as they enjoy insightful keynote speeches, panels, technical trainings, live demonstrations and networking opportunities. Further prizes were electronic kits donated by this year’s NXP Cup sponsors, Mouser Electronics and Elektor Magazine. They went to Team ARCAR2, also from Switzerland, and Team KAW4Wheels from Krakow in Poland.

New in 2019: obstacle avoidance, speed zone and figure 8

Nineteen teams participated in the finals, from France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland, Kosovo, Switzerland, Greece, Romania, Morocco and – for the first time – Lebanon. They transformed the institute into a competition arena for two days. Most of them volunteer to participate in addition to their curriculum.

New challenges in the training were three small tracks: obstacle avoidance – driving around a cube on the track, speed zone – slowdown at certain points, and figure 8 – driving on 8-track as often as possible in 90 seconds.

“So it was not only about speed this year but also about precision”, said Flavio Stiffan from Stiffan Consulting, part of the project management team supporting NXP Semiconductors for this EMEA challenge. “The biggest challenge were the lighting conditions. The students were working hard on calibrating the camera vision systems.”

International competition for student teams

Organized by NXP semiconductors, the NXP Cup is an international competition for student teams that build, program and race a smart, fully autonomous model car against each other on a race track. The winner is the team whose vehicle completes the previously unknown course the fastest without getting off the track. The vehicles are controlled by microcontrollers from NXP.