Participants in the "2026 SEA:ME Hackathon," an automotive software development competition organized by Volkswagen Group Korea through its nonprofit Volkswagen Group Woori Foundation, pose for a group photo. [Volkswagen Group Korea]
Participants in the "2026 SEA:ME Hackathon," an automotive software development competition organized by Volkswagen Group Korea through its nonprofit Volkswagen Group Woori Foundation, pose for a group photo. [Volkswagen Group Korea]

Volkswagen Group Korea announced Monday that it has successfully concluded the "2026 SEA:ME Hackathon," an automotive software development competition organized through its nonprofit Volkswagen Group Woori Foundation.

The SEA:ME (Software Engineering in Automotive and Mobility Ecosystems) Hackathon is an automotive software development competition sponsored by the Volkswagen Group Woori Foundation, with joint support from Volkswagen Group Korea and its subsidiary brands — Volkswagen, Audi, Lamborghini and Bentley. As in last year's competition, this year's event was co-organized by Kookmin University's Future Automotive Business Unit and Hanyang University ERICA's Intelligent Robot Business Unit.

Now in its fourth year, the hackathon ran for three days from Tuesday to Thursday as a residential competition. A total of 117 undergraduate students from 27 teams across seven universities nationwide took part.

The theme of this year's competition was the "AI-Native Scale-Car Autonomous Driving Challenge," in which participants developed advanced autonomous driving algorithms using the "TOPST SBC platform" provided by Telechips, a domestic fabless semiconductor company that served as a technology partner.

The AI-native scale car used as the competition's core teaching tool is a research platform that scales down the sensors found in full-size self-driving cars — including lidar and cameras — along with high-performance processors, into a model vehicle. Unlike conventional systems that move according to pre-programmed rules, the platform lets AI make its own judgments and control decisions based on perception data collected by the vehicle.

Each participating team this year received a one-month subscription to Claude Code Max, a generative AI solution specialized for coding. The "vibe coding" approach supported by Claude Code Max is a method in which developers issue natural-language commands to generative AI to produce desired outputs, rather than manually writing complex code line by line.

This year's competition placed particular emphasis on giving students hands-on experience collaborating with generative AI to implement the core logic of autonomous driving algorithms. The difficulty of the tasks was also significantly raised from the previous year, on the assumption that participants would use AI. Beyond basic driving, teams faced high-difficulty missions reflecting real urban environments, including navigating left-right forks and avoiding dynamic obstacles.

The top prize went to Kookmin University's SMT team, which demonstrated the most sophisticated algorithm design and the most stable autonomous driving performance. The excellence award went to Kookmin University's SKY team, and the gold award to Kookmin University's KUUVe team. The silver award went to Keimyung University's BISA team, the bronze award to Keimyung University's ASIB team, and the technology award to Chungbuk National University's Clothoid-S team.

Till Scheer, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group Korea and chairman of the Volkswagen Group Woori Foundation, said the automotive industry "stands at a pivotal moment of transformation, shifting from hardware-centric systems to software- and AI-based ones." He added that "in this AI-driven world, what matters most is not just technical knowledge, but cultivating the mindset to tackle uncertain problems."

Scheer said the hackathon, now in its fourth year, is "not a one-off event but a solid stepping stone for future automotive software talent to grow." He pledged to "continue creating opportunities for young people to learn without fear of failure and to fully realize their potential."

Meanwhile, Volkswagen Group Korea and the Woori Foundation are advancing "WE: Learn," an educational corporate social responsibility initiative focused on developing expertise in the domestic mobility software sector.

In May, a university consortium team sponsored by Volkswagen Group Korea and the Volkswagen Group Woori Foundation took first place at the "Bosch Future Mobility Challenge 2026," an international autonomous driving and connectivity competition.


likehyo85@heraldcorp.com