Try Not To Get Creeped Out By This Roborace Development Car's Autonomous Lap
Over 18 months on from the initial announcement about the series, we’re still not sure how to feel when it comes to Roborace. The idea of a driverless racing series is arguably besides the entire point of motorsport, but then again, we can’t help but be curious about how the proposed Formula E support series will shape up.
This week, we’ve been given a little taster, thanks to this footage depicting a moderately unsettling autonomous lap of the Berlin E-Prix track undertaken by ‘DevBot’. It’s a development car for the series, and if you’re wondering why it has a steering wheel, that’s because it’s a long way from the finished article.
Devbot has same basic guts that’ll be used for the futuristic-looking Roborace cars, all stuffed inside a bastardised Ginetta LMP3 car. It’s designed so it can be driven by humans, “allowing teams to fully understand how the car thinks and feels on a racetrack alongside the comprehensive real-time data,” Roborace organisers said last year.
In Berlin, DevBot managed to get within eight per cent of the time managed with a human driving. So, the squishy bit behind the wheel isn’t irrelevant just yet, then…
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
I don’t see how an autonomous race would be fun to watch. There would be no tension, no crashes or anything. It would just be cars going around the track like slot cars. The only way I could possibly consider this a sport is if each team made their own car and raced to see if it was the best. It would be like a robotics club
They could do it like pro wrestling where they put on a kayfabe. The interesting part would be how to make the overtaking feel genuine, because the organisers should have the control to be able to make the overtakes seem more exciting than F1, but if they’re lazy about it, every overtake will just be one car slowing down on a straight for the other to pass.
Alternatively, they could add bumping and/or weapons to make things seem more exciting.
now autonomous electric cars go stutututu…. what next? electric cars backfiring electricity
that would the coolest thing ever
Remeber AI taking only one line on racing games and braking randomly in straight if they were out of it? This is the future gentlemen and nobody will tell you to start your engine #stopthiscrapracing
Why not just have both types of racing? Also what game do you play where AI behaves like that?
I like the whole Autonomous racing idea as a sort of real life TAS deal. Not replacing normal human performed racing, but as an entirely different category, especially to make ring times more consistent.
Reminds me of this.
Wow, these new camouflage racing suits are amazing!!!
Hopefully this won’t act like fm6 ai when racing against other cars
A car sponsored by Pastor Maldonado
If you’re cheering for the car rather than the driver the series is doing something wrong. That’s exactly why the DTM is the most boring sport on TV. Racing needs personality. Honestly I’d rather watch darts. I respect the technology but I don’t know what or who it’s for?