We need to bring back large-scale engineering competitions that give away a ton of prize money. The modern autonomous vehicle industry traces back to the DARPA challenge, which pushed academic robotics teams to build working prototypes which led to tons of companies, like Waymo! Physical competitions have always forced a level of pragmatism that siloed software/AI leaderboards just can't match. Autonomous racing leagues and AI motorsport challenges in China (like in this video, where the…