Project development

First steps

When: By 15 December 2026

Participating teams are required to share a team photo for media promotion on the competition website.

Activity tracking – Project status

Participating teams commit to a ~monthly evaluation protocol. The quality of these submissions contributes to the final score, as outlined in the scoring section. The two actions that must be done are as follows:

  • The leader must submit a project status update on the competition website, containing a video and a report, by each deadline listed below.

  • The team must create a GitHub repository (personal or organisation) and invite the technical staff of the BFMC team as contributors with reading privileges: rares.lemnariu@ro.bosch.com and radu.filimon@ro.bosch.com

The submission deadline for each report is as follows. Each deadline ends at 23:59 Romanian local time (EET, or EEST from the last Sunday of March) on the stated day. Any contribution after the deadline is discarded.

  • 1st report: Monday 21 December 2026

    • The team should at least control the car with the given start-up code.

  • 2nd report: Monday 1 February 2027

    • The team should at least link the input data to a rough output (for example, camera to steering control).

  • Qualifications: Monday 8 March 2027

    • The team should have some autonomous features ready (Car can keep its lane and has a basic-level reaction to standard obstacles, such as stop at stop sign)

  • 3rd report: Monday 12 April 2027

    • The team should show autonomous features almost complete (Car can follow complex intersection paths and react to obstacles accordingly).

Website uploads:

  • Technical Report:

The technical report should follow industry practices for providing regular project updates. It should detail developments during the last sprint, including task status, resource utilisation, and technology employed.

The report must not exceed two pages and should be uploaded in PDF format on the website and also saved in the GitHub repository under the “Project Status” directory. A report template will be provided in the official documentation.

  • Video File:

The video should visually highlight the achievements documented in the report.

The video should be uploaded on the website Form. If wanted, it can be uploaded on the GitHub page as a link (YouTube links only).

GitHub Repository:

The GitHub repo should contain the developed code, the project plan, and the architecture of the project. An example will be shown in the official documentation.

team-name-BFMC2027/
├── monitoring/
│   ├── project-plan.md (or similar, but must be visible in the Github link)
│   └── Architecture.pdf (or similar, but must be visible in the Github link)
├── Project status/
│   └── project status 1/
│       ├── report-1.pdf
│       ├── progress-video-1.txt
│   └── project status 2/
│       ├── report-2.pdf
│       ├── progress-video-2.txt
│   └── ...
├── src/
│   ├── main.py
│   └── ...
└── README.md

Example:

The report indicates successful implementation of parking traffic sign recognition and the associated parking manoeuvre at 100%, by using the algorithms/technologies/etc.

  • The video shows clear evidence of the recognition and parking manoeuvres.

  • The project plan shows the deadline for the parking sign recognition and manoeuvres for next week.

  • The architecture shows where the package for the parking trigger is located, and also the package for the parking itself.

  • The code for the parking manoeuvre is present in the code.

Other info:

  • The quality of the code is not to influence the grading of the team (if parking is a series of calculated manoeuvres or a close-loop check), but it must be present.

Qualifications

When: By 8 March 2027

This stage of the competition serves as the elimination round. Here, teams must demonstrate the capabilities of their prototype and the potential to deliver a functional solution by the day of the challenge. This checkpoint is characterised by uploading a video on the competition website, which organisers will evaluate.

Up to 20 teams (the best ones) will advance beyond this point. The outcome of the qualifications will be “Passed” or “Not Passed”

The following criteria must be met in the video:

  • The video must be at most 5 minutes long.

  • The video must be filmed in one run (The car can be repositioned by hand and the track can be changed during the run, because of space limitations)

  • The car should show at least:

    • Intersection crossing.

    • Lane keeping functionalities

    • Prove complete successful maneuver after the following traffic signs: Stop, crosswalk, priority, parking.

    • Show speed control at the highway entry/exit sign.

The following aspects have an impact on the decision of passing/not passing:

  • Quality of the submitted reports so far.

  • Team performance considering if it’s first participation or not.

  • Entire environment (track built, dedicated lab, reproduced environment etc.)

  • Clearness of the video (showing monitoring tool, inputs, outputs, etc.)

Similar projects may be penalised (i.e. multiple teams in the same location with similar output)

After Qualifications

When: By 16 April 2027.

Teams wishing to participate in the Marketing Challenge can create their own pages and post there (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok). For more details, see the Scoring and Prizes section.

The organisers will request teams that successfully pass the qualifications round to create a promotional video following a specific content and template. These videos will then be featured on the competition website.

The teams can upload this video also on their own multimedia pages.

Travel preparation

When: By 16 April 2027.

Teams must take care of their travel arrangement and request, if needed, documents from the organisers. Documents (such as invitation required for visa) shall be requested by 11 April 2027 at the latest, to ensure a smooth organisation of the challenge.

Other information will be required for organising the event, such as a list of attendees, dates of arrival/departure from Cluj-Napoca, personal details (such as National ID documents) and more, if required. Teams need to plan a stay of 7 days in Cluj-Napoca in the middle of May 2027, from the day before Day 1 to the day after Day 5 (see The competition days). The exact dates are TBD and will be announced by the organisers.