With companies like Audi and BMW demonstrating that it’s possible for autonomous cars to have a turn of speed, it was only time before someone envisioned a race series for self-driving vehicles. That time is now, as Formula E has announced that it will be creating just such a series – called Roborace – during the 2016-2017 Formula E season, in collaboration with investment company Kinetik.
A global race series intended as a platform for autonomous driving technologies being developed by large industrial automotive and technology companies as well as top tech universities, Roborace will run two hours before every Formula E race on the calendar, and race on the same circuits across the world.
Roborace will feature ten teams with two driverless cars each, all of them identical but use competing real-time computing algorithms and AI technologies. One of these teams will be a crowd-sourced outfit for individual software and technology experts worldwide. More details regarding the teams and technologies used will be announced early next year.
“We passionately believe that, in the future, all of the world’s vehicles will be assisted by AI and powered by electricity, thus improving the environment and road safety,” said Kinetik founder Denis Sverdlov. “Thus, anyone who is at the edge of this transformation now has a platform to show the advantages of their driverless solutions and this shall push the development of the technology.”
“Roborace is an open challenge to the most innovative scientific and technology-focused companies in the world,” said Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag. “It is very exciting to create a platform for them to showcase what they are capable of and I believe there is great potential for us to unearth the next big idea through the unique crowd-sourced contest.”
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The whole point of motorsport is for man+machine, not machine+machine.
Autonomous driving is a trend now. It’s a technology that improve human life. Imagine coming back from work and letting your car drive you home where you can rest all the way.
I know we used to watch exciting machine driven by human in a race match. I would also like to see what machine is capable of driving itself.
It’s a paradigm shift. Just like the movie I, Robot. Before that, human would say, “Are you nuts letting machine drive you? Is it safe?” Now it become “Are you nuts to drive yourself at 1000km/h? Too many human errors.” :)
Bodoh orang Yahudi make race like this. this like remote control lah. Where got meaning? Nothng like if got driver inside to really race!
Skynet car have no fear. Just like terminator, it will ram thru everything just to win. All human drivers beware
Hope Alphabet joins this.
HAHAHA see i told ya AVH this would happun!
Now we can finally establish whose RC is superi0r
@Paultan DRIVEN new episode WHERE? @_@