A Self-Driving Vehicle is about to Race at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

[Davide Nativo]

This year, Goodwood Festival of Speed weekend (12-15 July) will surely be remembered for something unique: the debut of Robocar and the first ever attempt of a self-driving vehicle at the classic hillclimb.

The car is equipped with four electric motors, each producing 135 kW. Weight comes in at about 1.350 kg (2.976 pounds), with the prototype capable of hitting 320 km/h (198 mph) thanks to its total power output of around 500 hp. The “driver” is an NVidia Drive PX 2 platform, which uses two Parker processors units consisting each of a 256 core Pascal GPU. The company claims that the board can run up to 24 trillion deep learning operations per second. The “eyes” are 5 LIDAR units, 18 ultrasonic sensors, 2 radar units, 2 optical speed sensors, 6 cameras, and a GPS navigation device.

The car features a sleek aerodynamic, futuristic, look, designed by Daniel Simon, German artist and former Volkswagen and Bugatti designer, who sketched the visionary vehicles seen in movies such as 'Tron: Legacy' and 'Oblivion'.

"I can't think of a more exciting way to celebrate our Silver Jubilee than to have Roborace attempt the first autonomous race car run up the hill - said the Duke of Richmond and founder of the Festival of Speed, Charles Gordon-Lennox - Roborace plays an important role in the future of mobility, challenging public perceptions and providing a platform to advance new technologies. This makes them the perfect partner to undertake this significant feat."

Lucas di Grassi, former F1, WEC driver and Formula E champion, CEO of Roborace, added: “We are excited that the Duke of Richmond has invited us to make history at Goodwood as we attempt the first ever fully – and truly – autonomous uphill climb using only artificial intelligence.”

It won’t be an easy task for the futuristic concept car, to tackle the 1.16 miles (1.9 km) hillclimb venue. Sergey Malygin, head of the development team at ARRIVAL, the automotive technology company behind Robocar’s self-drive algorithm, explains why:

“The Goodwood hill climb presents a real challenge for level 4/level 5 autonomous driving systems. It is a narrow track with complex geometry. Turns and hills with a great deal of tree coverage mean you can’t rely on GPS/RTK signal for localisation. Use of all advanced sensors, including LIDARs and cameras with deep learning based computer vision methods are needed to perform well at this course.”

Here at RaceDepartment we wish Robocar the best of luck!

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Are you looking forward to Robocar appearance at Goodwood FoS? What do you think of self-driving race cars? Let us know in the comments below!

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Very interested from the tech point of view, as someone who's worked with game-level AI at least ( it's enough to make me more than peripherally interested ). As a race car, utterly pointless - racing is a test of human skill in process, not just preparation.

 

[Nick Hill]

I vote for "we wish Robocar the best of luck" as the most surreal thing I have ever read in my time at RD!

I'm just making a speculative guess but I feel like getting this car up the Goodwood course is probably a task a decent high school robotics club could accomplish (assuming they were provided a sufficiently detailed/documented API). Getting this thing up the Goodwood course *at speed* is probably where things start to get a little dicey.

I dunno, not a robotics expert, but I am a software developer - just thinking through how the problem might be approached and making a guess accordingly.

 

[biggabusta]

Technology is awesome! I can't wait for the future of the automotive industry.

 

[Nevini]

Not a fan of RC racing doubt this will ever take off in a big way. Nice as a test.

 

[Grape-Juice]

New terminator movie looks lit

 

[Davide Nativo]

I vote for "we wish Robocar the best of luck" as the most surreal thing I have ever read in my time at RD!

That would get me a nice trophy no one has been awarded of so far

Anyway I meant the team behind it, not the car itself

 

[Tbear]

I can understand the need for pilot-less fighter aircraft, but pilot-less racing cars?

Call me old fashioned I guess.

 

[Ryno917]

"Self-Autonomous" is a bit of a redundant title, no?

 

[DND]

Think I would back up from the hay bales a bit if I were at Goodwood

 

[Sky]

throw magnets at it

 

[Toonces]

"Self-Autonomous" is a bit of a redundant title, no?

Double Ditto! You can say that again!

[Actually, Road & Track magazine predicted this very thing ca. 1956.

 

[Slowdive]

I don't know about this. It seems kind of pointless, sort of like watching a robot having sex with itself.

 

[Durge Driven]

I like the idea, i could see this becoming a sport/hobby

You Log in, purchase a hour drive, software would sync your controllers, etc
Hi-Res cameras would give a good a view as a sim

You could drive any track used from anywhere in world !

That is what I call e-sport

 

[Davide Nativo]

"Self-Autonomous" is a bit of a redundant title, no?

you are right sorry, not an English native speaker, so you will forgive me for some mistakes I make here and there

 

[Nico]

What is the point of a sport event if there is no human factor involved?

I think self-driving cars are necessary, but I don't think a racing series with them is necessary. F1 is already enough of a "race of engineers" thing where the driver is not as important as it used to be. Completely removing it from the equation distorts the concept of the sport.

 

[Tbear]

I've been watching this sort of thing for a while now. Going on 3 years ago I almost spewed cheap gas-station coffee all over the copy of Road & Track I was examining "pre-purchase" (maybe) when I read the headline: Can An Autonomous Audi Beat A Pro-Driver On A Race Track? HERE Yeah ... there was a 9 second gap at the end of it all ... But, I gotta ask ... "How many races you ever seen that had a 9 second gap between first and second?" Hell Man, I knew it was all over back in '97 when Deep Blue kicked Garry Kasparov's butt all over the chessboard HERE. It was only a matter of time before the first computer-car beat a human, there's a number of articles on the 'net covering that story ... but the one that got MY attention was the article having the sub-headline of:

Scientists predict motorists could soon be transported by autonomous cars with the driving skills of Michael Schumacher

Hang on tight to your morning coffee, Darling.


Now ... Goodwood. Don't tell Sir Stirling ... it'll kill him.

 

[Grape-Juice]

Can't wait for F1 fans debating if ai are really alive in the year 2035.

 

[Will Mazeo]

This is like buying a game and let the AI play it for you.
No, thanks.

 

[bporion]

what a shame they are letting that thing race !