The vehicles participating in the IAC are SAE level 4 autonomous as they are capable of completing circuit laps and overtaking maneuvers without any human intervention.

Beginning in 2021, individual time trials are run by all teams over the course, and the event is scored with the fastest lap achieved in five minutes on an oval track.

[16] The goal of the IAC was to focus on the development of a full autonomous driving software stack that enabled perception, planning and control on the racetrack.

by completing a series of hackathon challenges of increasing difficulty, starting from a solo lap and simple obstacle avoidance[26] to 1-to-1 full races.

It consisted of a qualification round, where the teams had to complete their fastest solo lap, with time penalties attributed for violating the track limits.

The next Indy Autonomous Challenge competition took place on January 7, 2022, at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway (LVMS), as the final event of the 2022 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show.

The teams had to perform a complete and safe overtake on track in the test days before the event in order to qualify for the race matches, which were held on a tennis-style elimination tournament.

The German team spun out of control after performing an overly aggressive obstacle avoidance manoeuvre while car #5 (PoliMOVE) was ultimating its overtake.

After a summer break and a vehicle refresh, which included an increase of the engine power[46] and new sensors and computing equipment, the cars were brought to Fort Worth, Texas for the next challenge.

[48] Similar to what had happened during the Simulation Race, many teams were disqualified due to either causing a collision or simply violating the minimum distance between the cars, as their algorithms could not safely handle the increased opponent freedom.

Due to the increased difficulty of running on road course circuits with respect to ovals and the lack of complete GPS coverage of the track,[56] the event format was once again a single vehicle time trial competition.

Team PoliMOVE scored the fastest lap, while TUM Autonomous Motorsport took second place and TII Unimore Racing (formerly Euroracing) was on the lowest step of the podium.

[needs update] For the IAC, a special autonomous race car was developed, initially in 2021 by Clemson University[65] in the Deep Orange Project,[66] and the vehicle was presented at CES 2021.

[67] The race car is based on a Dallara Indy Lights chassis[68] enhanced with computation hardware, sensors and actuators to support autonomous operation on the racetrack.

The specific model introduced for the initial 2021 IAC challenge was the Dallara AV-21, a rear-wheel drive, powered by an internal combustion engine that produces 335 kW (449 hp) and has a 6-speed sequential gearbox.

[58][11][72] The AV-24 has the same base Dallara AV chasis as the AV-21,[11] but IAC has entirely re-engineered the compute hardware, sensors, and software system to support the autonomous racecar operation.

New equipment includes six Allied Vision Mako G-319C cameras (2064 x 1544 px resolution, 12-bit color depth, 37.5 frames per second), a Luminar Iris 360-degree long-range 275 m (902 ft)) lidar system, Continental ARS 548 radar sensor with range of 300–1,500 m (980–4,920 ft), New Eagle/IAC custom drive-by-wire system (steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire including independent actuation of front and rear brakes), Marelli race control and real-time data interface, and an improved GPS interface.