The first race of the mobiles ended in an accident

In 2015, three organizations related to sports and electric vehicles entered into a partnership agreement. These are Formula E , the British Kinetik venture capital fund, led by Denis Sverdlov and Charge, a company dedicated to the development of electric vehicles. The purpose of the partnership is to demonstrate the capabilities of modern technologies by creating a world unmanned racing series of electric cars. The new championship was named Roborace . According to the plan, in this championship can take as major players from the automotive industry, and the leading technical universities. Ten teams can participate in races, each with two unmanned vehicles. An interesting point - all teams must have identical cars. Only the control software platform is different - a weak form of artificial intelligence and additional software.

Another Roborace mission is to play the role of an event to support the Formula E Championship, an auto racing class on electric vehicles with open wheels. It was decided to drive the UAVs with wheels before the Formula E races on the same tracks as the main championship. Now these races are held in ten cities of the world, including Beijing, Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, London, Moscow and others. This month, the first test race of the Roborace Championship took place in Buenos Aires. Not without accidents.


Only 2 vehicles, DevBot 1 and DevBot 2 took part in the only race. One of the electric cars entered the turn was too hard, as a result of which the autonomous vehicle crashed into the fence. Since the drone suffered, it’s not possible to talk about victims and injuries of pilots or spectators. Eyewitnesses uploaded several photos and videos from the race site to Twitter. The developers reported in their microblog that the software platform of romo mobiles decided to “expand the boundaries”.
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The maximum speed developed by the “winner” reached 185 km / h. DevBots - not at all miniature racing cars, their size allows you to comfortably fit in the cab driver. If necessary, a human can manage a rover mobile. In the test competition of two robotic pilots rivals in the cockpit was not, the management of DevBots engaged in artificial intelligence. Despite the accident, the organizers are satisfied with the results of the race. Robomobili showed themselves well, despite the appearance of an unexpected obstacle in the form of a dog, slowly walking along the track (the photo of this shaggy participant of the race is located below).

By the way, even the accident is considered as a positive moment. The fact is that many viewers of the same "Formula 1" watch the race, because during the races sometimes there are accidents. This makes the race more spectacular, it turns out that accidents attract viewers. Robotic races were promised failure, because if the AI ​​drove the machines perfectly, there would have been no promises for entertainment. But it seems that the skeptics were wrong - the racers are no less spectacular than their alternative with manned fireballs.

Hardware and software platforms are good. The vehicles themselves are equipped with lidars, they are placed both in front of the DevBots, and on the sides and rear. There is also a camera with a 360-degree viewing angle, information from which is complemented by several more ordinary cameras located in front. The control hardware platform is Nvidia's Drive PX 2 .



The technical side of Roborace continues to be improved by developers, the championship itself is not yet fully ready to launch. Actually, therefore, only two cars were launched in Buenos Aires. As mentioned above, the main mission of the championship is to show that the technologies necessary to create vehicles of the future already exist. And they are ready to use in the most difficult conditions. Racing is a great way to create such conditions to test the work of an AI driving electric vehicles. Of the ten teams, one will be formed as a crowdsourcing community, fully open to proposals. Scientists, engineers, motorists will be able to offer their own development. If they are approved by the representatives of the team, then the proposed projects will be implemented.

“We believe that in the future all cars in the world will be electric and unmanned, which will improve the quality of the environment and safety on the roads. Roborace is a celebration of revolutionary technology and innovation that humankind has reached in this area at the moment. This is a global platform to demonstrate that robotics and artificial intelligence technologies can coexist with us in real life. Thus, anyone who is now on the threshold of these transformations will have a platform to show the benefits of their unmanned solutions, and besides this competition will push the development of the technology itself, ” said Denis Sverdlov after signing a partnership agreement with other project participants.


Unfortunately, the full video of the entire race is not available, the organizers are now analyzing it, assessing the behavior of the hardware and software components of the robots. But it is known that while racing robots are not ready for full participation in such races, and the software is still being finalized by teams. The date of the opening of Roborace is also unknown, although earlier it was reported about conducting full-fledged robotic races during the current Formula E season.

In the process of waiting, you can get acquainted with a series of commercials , telling about the whole "kitchen» Roborace.