The (US) Institute of Navigation Satellite Division announced from Manassas, Virginia on 16 February the winners of the Seventh Annual ION Autonomous Snowplow Competition during the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.

ION’s Satellite Division held its Seventh Annual Autonomous Snowplow Competition on 26-29 January at Rice Park in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota in conjunction with the 131st Saint Paul Winter Carnival. Sponsored by the ION Satellite Division and held in cooperation with the ION North Star Section, the ION Annual Autonomous Snowplow Competition is an international event open to college and university students, as well as the general public, that challenges teams to design, build, and operate a fully autonomous snowplow using state of the art navigation and control technologies to rapidly, accurately and safely clear a designated path of snow. Eight of initial thirteen teams ended up successfully completing all the phases of the competition and participated in frigid, yet snowless, temperatures during the four day competition, each using use state of the art navigation systems such as LIDAR, optical navigation systems, inertial instruments, magnetic sensors, ultra wide-band radio reflectors, visual odometry, GNSS, and differential GPS.