We're back from Busan after racing at the 29th RoboRacer Competition, IFAC 2026. 🇰🇷 This was our second race of the year — after ICRA in Vienna back in June, we brought a rebuilt platform and a lot more confidence to Korea.

IFAC 2026 · results
Head-to-headBO32 Finals
Knockout races won2
Overall15th / 55

We advanced to the BO32 Head-to-Head Finals, winning our first two knockout races as a team, and finished 15th overall out of 55 international teams.

The white-bodied DeepSpeed car alongside SNU ZERO's black-bodied car during a head-to-head race
Racing SNU ZERO in the knockouts
A DeepSpeed team member celebrating with both fists raised as the race is called
Winning a knockout race

A rebuilt car

One of the biggest changes since ICRA: we upgraded our hardware. Onboard compute went from our original NVIDIA Jetson to an Intel NUC, alongside a full swap of our servos and motor. That gave us a more reliable, more capable platform to actually push in Busan.

Top-down view of the rebuilt car showing the Intel NUC, servos and wiring under the body shell
The rebuilt platform: new compute, new servos, new motor

On the software side, the biggest shift was building our own Waypoint Studio. What used to be countless hours of manual trajectory generation at ICRA became a workflow where we could iterate cleanly and apply tweaks straight from what we saw in practice sessions.

Two team members working on laptops trackside between runs
Iterating between practice sessions

Not everything goes to plan

On day one we found out the tires we'd flown in from Singapore had no grip on the venue's concrete floor. UNICORN Racing offered to help and got us a set that worked perfectly. We're genuinely grateful for that.

The DeepSpeed car running on the bare concrete floor of the Busan venue
The venue's concrete — the surface our tires had no answer for

How far the field has come

Beyond the results, this week was a reminder of just how far the field has come. We were genuinely surprised by how many teams could avoid obstacles cleanly at speeds much higher than we expected. Watching that, taking notes in the pits, and getting pushed to be better by teams from around the world is exactly what makes RoboRacer special. 🔥

The Busan competition hall: the barrier-lined track in front of the RoboRacer stage
The hall at BEXCO, Busan

Thank you

Five NTU DeepSpeed members with their car in front of the IFAC 2026 RoboRacer backdrop
The Busan crew, car in hand

Huge thanks to the team: Ting-Ju Chen, Yun-Tung Lee, Nathan Lee, Abhiram Chennupati, Sarvajana Hari, Kah Lok Wong, and Baba Moolya. We would not have been able to achieve this without you.

A special thanks to the NTU College of Computing and Data Science for providing the testing venue and resources that made this run possible.

Finally, thank you to the RoboRacer Foundation and the IFAC 2026 organizers for running such a smooth, well-organized event for 55 teams from start to finish — and to the teams we competed against, for making it a genuinely welcoming community off the track.

See you at the next starting line. 🏁🏎