We have already paid a lot of attention to the topic of Roborace, a race in which robot cars drive around the track without human involvement. And last week, the history of these races was enriched by a momentous event. The first Roborace races were held at the Circuito Monteblanco in Spain, with only two teams participating. And the winner of these races was Team Arrival, the car of which managed to beat the car of the Munich Technical University.
The races Roborace can’t be called frivolous, they involve electric DevBot cars, the engines of which have a capacity of 300 kW (402 horse powers) and they can reach a speed of 320 kilometers per hour. The role of the driver of these cars is performed by the software, developed by the participating teams individually for each race and each track, which is performed in the “brain” of robot car – a specialized on-board computer Nvidia Drive PX2. Five LIDAR laser scanners, two radars, 18 ultrasonic sensors, a GNSS satellite positioning system, six cameras and two optical speed meters are the eyes, ears and senses of the car.
The Roborace race format with eight laps is quite unusual for automobile racing. To ensure the safety and integrity of expensive robot cars, overtaking can only be done by mutual consent and mutual agreement between the car control systems and, moreover, only on long and straight sections of the track. If a car is approaching at higher speed to the car ahead, their control systems communicate with each other and the system of the car ahead gets a “request” to move back and let the overtaking car go ahead.
Of course, Roborace racing cannot yet be called spectacular at this stage. Although robot cars are moving fast enough, but their driving lacks any elements of human risk, experience and intuition that sometimes allow jumping over the limits. That’s why Roborace races are still of interest to a narrow circle of specialists, and the majority of spectators of these races have something to do with autonomous driving technologies.
However, the first Roborace races were held in spite of everything, and we give our readers an opportunity to form their own opinion about all this by watching the video below.