Participants and Supervising Professor

Incheon National University announced that the UNITA team, an autonomous driving club from the Department of Electrical Engineering in the College of Engineering, won the Grand Prize at the “1st 2025 KAIST Mobility Challenge Competition,” hosted by the Mobility Research Institute of KAIST.

This competition, held for the first time for university students nationwide, is the country’s largest collaborative autonomous driving technology contest. Designed as a practice-oriented experiential program linking education, research, and industry, the competition aims to cultivate key talents in future mobility. The event took place from October 15, 2025, to February 10, 2026, progressing through preliminary screening and a final round, with the final winners announced on February 10.

A total of 25 teams from across the country participated in the preliminary round, and 12 teams advanced to the finals after document and technical evaluations. The final round brought together 51 students from 10 universities, including Incheon National University, Kongju National University, Keimyung University, Kyungpook National University, Hanyang University, Pusan National University, Inha University, Hongik University, Sungshin Women’s University, and Ewha Womans University. Over approximately two months, participants developed and validated autonomous driving algorithms. The organizers constructed a miniature smart city equipped with intelligent communication infrastructure, which served as the competition arena.

The UNITA team, supervised by Professor Myung-Hoon Lee of the Department of Electrical Engineering (Intelligent Control and Machine Learning Laboratory) at Incheon National University, consisted of students Ki-hyun Lee (’24), Woo-jin Jung (’25), Da-in Han (’25), Jun-sang Song (’26), Jae-min Cho (’27), and Da-bin Lee (’28). The team successfully implemented a wireless communication-based multi-vehicle cooperative driving algorithm along with stable path generation and tracking techniques, earning high recognition for their technical completeness.

As the Grand Prize winner, the UNITA team received the top award of KRW 5 million out of a total prize pool of KRW 10 million.

Meanwhile, the UNITA team is conducting further research and technological advancements with the goal of participating in the “RoboCup 2026” international competition, scheduled to be held from July 1 to 6 at Songdo Convensia in Incheon.