Makery

Roborace, the first race of 100% autonomous electric racing cars

Devbot 1 and 2 in the middle of a race. © DR

Published 27 February 2017 by

In the wings of the Formula E championship in Buenos Aires, the very first prototype race of the driverless Robocar developed by Roborace took place on February 18.

Double first in Argentina: two autonomous cars took part in a race, heralding a new competition model for a driverless Formula E (E for electric) and the future Robocar, a 100% sports car developed by Roborace.

A collaboration between the organizer of the championship for Formula E electric single-seater cars and the investment fund in new technologies Kinetik, Roborace passed an important milestone in its project of racing vehicles controlled by artificial intelligence (IA). On February 18, in the wings of the Formula E grand prix in Buenos Aires, Roborace launched the first race opposing two prototypes of autonomous vehicles, Devbot 1 and Devbot 2.

This prototype is the development basis for the Robocar that will take part in the Roborace championship for autonomous vehicles, that should take place this season in the wings of the Formula E awards.

The Devbot model during the first presentation of the prototype. © Roborace

Devbot 1 and 2 indulged in a few practice laps on the Buenos Aires Formula E race track. And for practice rounds, the measured top speed of the car in front was far from ridiculous: 185 km/h!

Devbot 1 gets ahead of Devbot 2 by a few meter in Buenos Aires. © Roborace

A first for going off the track…

The race gave the opportunity to observe how the autonomous racing cars reacted facing an unforeseen obstacle. A dog invited itself on the track and Devbot 1 perfectly changed its trajectory to avoid it, to the great relief of the organizers.

For Devbot 2, the adventure came to an end when it was sent flying after a bad maneuver (and not because of the dog). It hit the security wall surrounding the track. The team assures with humor that no pilot was hurt. A crash that therefore allowed Devbot 1 to win the race. The accident was not filmed but Autoblog Argentina published the pictures below on its Twitter account.

A supercomputer for a racing beast

To be “piloted”, the Robocar relies on the supercomputer from Nvidia, Drive PX 2, using 12 CPU cores and 24 teraflops (i.e. 24 billion operations per second). The lot will be equipped with cameras to find its bearings on the track, 5 Lidar detection systems (laser remote sensing), two interval radars and two navigation systems, the GPS and the Glonass (a Russian system close to the GPS).

Robocar, a cute name for stupefying technologies. © Roborace / Daniel Simon

The design of the Robocar was entrusted to Daniel Simon. This designer worked for Bugatti and was part of the HTR Formula 1 team, but his most famous works are the vehicles from the Tron films: Legacy and Oblivion. This Monday in Barcelona as part of the mobility trade show, the designer officially presented the Robocar, in the presence of Denis Sverdlov, CEO of Roborace.

The next race will take place in Mexico

Roborace is planning to run its racing cars on the large Formula E racetracks. Announced for the end of 2015, the Roborace should see about ten autonomous race cars compete against each other. Just like single-seater electric cars, autonomous racing cars will perform on urban tracks such as Paris or Berlin. The first public demos took place at the end of 2016 in order to test this technology in real conditions, especially on the tracks of Silverstone in Great-Britain, in Morocco and in Hong Kong.

The next Roborace is is planned on April 1 in Mexico, before Monaco, Paris (May 20), Berlin, Brussels or still New York and Montreal.

For more information on Roborace