The Autonomous Vehicle Competition (AVC) involves submitting a project proposal, documenting the progress, and continuing all the way to presenting the final product. The competition will consist of both preliminary and ​“day of competition” phases (as detailed in handbook).

High school teams will be required to design and program an autonomous vehicle for a given task: that it can make its way through a maze-like obstacle course in the designated amount of time and with the least amount of human intervention. Each year, there will be a different task with a different theme. Teams will be judged on their engineering design process, vehicle design, and vehicle performance. Teams will apply mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer engineering concepts to create their autonomous vehicles. Teams will also be required to draw upon and further develop their written and verbal communication skills.