MANIPAL: Project MANAS by Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) has secured the first position worldwide, in the Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition, held at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, recently. More than 35 plus teams from across the globe participated in the event, which concluded recently.The project MANAS robot was named as 'Solo,' which was designed indigenously by MIT students from various engineering streams. Apart from bagging the grand prize, the team also bagged the first prize in interoperability profile challenge, second in design challenge and sixth in cyber security. Some of the other top institutions which participated in the event included, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, DTU, US Military Academy and Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology).The team was led by Siddharth Venkatraman, Shrijit Singh and members included: Arya Karani, Ansel Dias, Rakshit Jain, Shivesh Khaitan, Dheeraj Mohan, Sarathkrishnan Ramesh, Anirudh Kashyap, Nishan De'Almedia, Gokul P and Tanaya Mandke. They are guided by Ashalatha Nayak, department of computer science and engineering, MIT. The team awarded $3,800.IGVC (Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition) is an annual robotics competition organized every year in Oakland University, Michigan, USA and has international participation. It has various challenges focused on autonomous ground vehicles. This year, in the 27th annual IGVC, Project MANAS, a team of undergraduate students from MIT won the grand prize with their bot named SOLO among 35 teams from various universities all around the world , being the second Indian team to do so, the first being IIT Bombay in 25th annual IGVC in 2017. Project MANAS beat top Indian teams like IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and DTU and also international teams like Georgia Tech, University of Michigan and others. This feat was achieved by the team in only their second attempt in the competition. The grand prize is awarded to the team with the highest cumulative score from the sub-challenges. Manas placed first in the IOP (Interoperability Profile) challenge, second in design challenge and sixth in cyber security challenge. This was enough to net 44 points for clinching first prize.The project is funded the Manipal Academy of Higher Education along with various sponsors.MANAS stands for higher intelligence and the team is working towards their goal of building India's first driverless car.