Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming mobility — and not just in full-scale vehicles. At the AI Festival 2025 at TU Wien, we showcased how autonomous driving can be experienced on a smaller, hands-on scale. During the festival’s Public Day, where the general public was invited to explore interactive demonstrations, visitors could take a seat and challenge our autonomous model race car.
Our model vehicle may be compact, but the technology behind it is equivalent to what powers real autonomous cars. Equipped with sensors, decision-making algorithms, and precise motor control, it can navigate independently while reacting to its environment. For us as students and researchers, it is the perfect platform to experiment with intelligent mobility — merging robotics, software engineering, and practical problem-solving. Demonstrating it live allowed people not just to watch it in action, but to feel it: seeing the car drive itself, understanding how it perceives the track, and even trying to outperform it.
We especially enjoyed engaging with such a diverse audience — from enthusiastic school pupils to curious retirees. Many visitors asked insightful questions and shared their perspectives on the future of transportation. These conversations were a highlight for us, turning the presentation into a real exchange and reminding us why we love to share our work: because innovation thrives when people get involved.
