Educational Effect of a Student Competition for Self-Driving Cars on Selected Software Engineering Topics

Paper i proceeding, 2013

Since 2008, the annual student competition "CaroloCup" is carried out at Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany with the goal to develop self-driving miniature vehicles in 1:10 scale, which are able to follow the road while considering surrounding obstacles and to park on a sideways parking strip. One major motivation for this competition according the official rules and regulations document is to provide a fictitious yet realistic development project setting where participating students can apply their theoretical knowledge to prepare themselves for their future jobs. A questionnaire was developed to get feedback from participating teams for deriving indicators for the competition's objectives. Results from the first call for participating in the study will be presented and discussed focusing on the students' motivation to participate in such a project on the one hand, and the educational effect with an estimation on the future job's relevance for the development of embedded systems covering selected software engineering topics on the other hand.