Formula E: Driverless Support Series Announced

[Paul Jeffrey]

Formula E and Kinetik have announced a revolutionary new form of 'motorsport' that will act as support to selected Formula E events during the 2016/17 racing season, drivers not included!

With the intention to provide a competitive platform for the autonomous driving solutions that are now being developed by many large industrial automotive and technology players, ROBORACE races will take place on the Friday before the main Formula E race and aim to have 20 cars on the grid by the time the series makes it debut.

Denis Sverdlov, Founder of Kinetik and ROBORACE, said,

“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. ROBORACE is a celebration of revolutionary technology and innovation that humanity has achieved in that area so far. It’s a global platform to show that robotic technologies and AI can co-exist with us in real life. 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.”​

Alejandro Agag, CEO of Formula E, said,

“We are very excited to be partnering with Kinetik on what is surely one of the most cutting-edge sporting events in history. ROBORACE is an open challenge to the most innovative scientific and technology-focused companies in the world. 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.”​

Such an innovative concept is sure to stir up plenty of emotional responses from fans of the more traditional forms of racing. Despite the impressive technology that would be required to make this idea work the main question on many peoples lips boil down to one thing: Will the racing be any good?

Personally I'm not sure what to think about this new idea, please leave your comments below!

 

[antirussia81]

A motorsport without a grain of sport in it. Fascinating. Watching racing robots is just like watching few blenders and checking which one is spinning faster.
Oh well... "times they are a changin'..."

 

[BoogerMac]

Is it the future of motorsports? No.

Will it be fracken awesome? Yes!

 

[Chris]

It's like robot wars (aka the greatest show ever) only with car racing.

Why don't they make it into like a Death race kind of thing with obstacles and fire pits etc. that pop up out of the track for the robots to race around.

Who needs "Fanboost" rubbish when you could have "Chainsaw boost!"

 

[Radu Oros]

So this will be like that movie with Hugh Jackman, Real Steel. Where in the close future robots replaced humans in the boxing/fighting sport. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433035/

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

I can only imagine the podium interviews after the race are going to be awesome....


While I see why this is "interesting" from a technical perspective, it's not something that will attract me as a spectator sport, remove the human factor and you have removed way too much.

 

[Reik Major]

I think it will be very interesting to watch. I'm sure there's so many stuff to calculate each moment and so many different approaches to it so there's many room for mistakes which leaves me curious for each corner what could happen next.

So I see a chance it could become very funny and even more exciting than some procession races with real drivers...

 

[Keith Joyce]

It should at least provide a useful development/test environment for the technology.

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

I fully agree about it being good for the future of the technology, and I could find it interesting to watch, but from a "Discovery Channel program about robotics" perspective, it would have zero feeling of racing for me.

 

[Tume]

Welp, Honda may be crap in F1 but they still got ASIMO, let's see how he'll do in Roborace...maybe clinch the title as long as the reliability and speed are there

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

Don't count on Honda being crap forever, they are not new to making engines, in the contrary they are known in the industry for making extremely reliable engines with quite high power output compared to its competitors running the same technology (historically speaking, I have no clue about how this stands today).

 

[Will Mazeo]

People soon will put a machine to breathe for them just for the sake of convenience.
And I thought electric cars were bad enough.

 

[fortyfivekev]

This sort of thing would be great for a DARPA challenge type thing but not as a sport.

It would be funny if sim developers got involved. The Kunos cars would follow each other around all day and never pass. The Reiza cars would spend the whole time ignoring track limits and getting sideways and the ISI cars would boast about having the best tyres but still have no grip

 

[Tume]

I never said Honda would be crap forever, obviously, they need time to get better, hopefully close to the performance in the old days.

I just find the current situation poor and hilarious at the same time, I mean everyone's making jokes of the car breaking down regularly.

 

[Mark Ratzenbacher]

Real-life graphics ?

Put cameras in the robocars and link the car to my simrig.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Cant wait for the 24000 hours of le mans

 

[John Addison]

Stupid

 

[Dan Allen]

Dumbest. Idea. Ever!

 

[Rob]

I fully agree about it being good for the future of the technology, and I could find it interesting to watch, but from a "Discovery Channel program about robotics" perspective, it would have zero feeling of racing for me.

I'll not be watching lest I give this "competition" my support. It's simply not racing to me. And it's not new either. There were plenty of T.V. shows started around 1998-2000 with this same idea, including Battle Bots and Robot Wars. This idea only makes that premise less interesting. I'm not aware of any engineer who puts his life on the line to race. Besides, we have this now. It's called F1.

Better idea: Simulate racing on a computer then organize league championships which, via the internet...oh...wait...nevermind.

 

[Insert Coin]

With cheering robots?