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Written by Rowan Horncastle
Question: how far do you have to look into a crystal ball until driverless race cars are a reality? Answer: you don"t have to look into a crystal ball at all. You just need to look at the pictures on this very screen, as that ladies and gents, is the autonomous driverless race car of the future. And it"s here. Right now. And very much a thing. It"s called the Robocar. The world"s first driverless race car set to compete against a grid of other identical Robocars in an all-electric racing series set to support next year"s Formula E championship.Designed by Daniel Simon he of penning many super cool sci-fi cars for Hollywood it"s the production iteration of the upcoming ePrix robot cars headed up by Roborace.This is the latest step following months of intensive testing. The previous leap was last week, when autonomous electric racing took a giant step closer to reality when, for the first time ever, two of Roborace"s prototype autonomous race cars ran against each other on track at Buenos Aires.One also crashed. But that"s what happens in racing. And even though the freaky robot car did decide to head-butt a wall, it very much showed that it"s something that should be taken seriously.The sleek cabin-less, high-downforce production racer is an evolution from Daniel Simon"s previous designs, incorporates some very clever tech and makes the new generation of Formula One cars look a bit meh".Weighing in at 975kg, the carbon fibre prototype is 4.8m long and 2m wide all very much race car proportions. Powering it are four electric motors (chucking out 300kW) each and a 540kW battery that Roborace claim is a good enough package to get the Robocar to 200mph while running on Michelin road tyres. That"s impressive in itself. But what makes it more so is that there"s no one on board driving it.See, normally the brain" of a race car is the fleshy bag of bones and organs: the human race car driver. But the brain" of the Robocar is not a person. It is NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2, a digital brain capable of up to 24 trillion A.I. operations per second that works in conjunction with five lidars (light detection and ranging system), two radars, 18 ultrasonic sensors, two optical speed sensors, six AI cameras, and GNSS positioning to get around the Formula E tracks without smashing into each other or the local scenery.
Date written: 27 Feb 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 6868
Question: how far do you have to look into a crystal ball until driverless race cars are a reality? Answer: you don"t have to look into a crystal ball at all. You just need to look at the pictures on this very screen, as that ladies and gents, is the autonomous driverless race car of the future. And it"s here. Right now. And very much a thing. It"s called the Robocar. The world"s first driverless race car set to compete against a grid of other identical Robocars in an all-electric racing series set to support next year"s Formula E championship.Designed by Daniel Simon he of penning many super cool sci-fi cars for Hollywood it"s the production iteration of the upcoming ePrix robot cars headed up by Roborace.This is the latest step following months of intensive testing. The previous leap was last week, when autonomous electric racing took a giant step closer to reality when, for the first time ever, two of Roborace"s prototype autonomous race cars ran against each other on track at Buenos Aires.One also crashed. But that"s what happens in racing. And even though the freaky robot car did decide to head-butt a wall, it very much showed that it"s something that should be taken seriously.The sleek cabin-less, high-downforce production racer is an evolution from Daniel Simon"s previous designs, incorporates some very clever tech and makes the new generation of Formula One cars look a bit meh".Weighing in at 975kg, the carbon fibre prototype is 4.8m long and 2m wide all very much race car proportions. Powering it are four electric motors (chucking out 300kW) each and a 540kW battery that Roborace claim is a good enough package to get the Robocar to 200mph while running on Michelin road tyres. That"s impressive in itself. But what makes it more so is that there"s no one on board driving it.See, normally the brain" of a race car is the fleshy bag of bones and organs: the human race car driver. But the brain" of the Robocar is not a person. It is NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2, a digital brain capable of up to 24 trillion A.I. operations per second that works in conjunction with five lidars (light detection and ranging system), two radars, 18 ultrasonic sensors, two optical speed sensors, six AI cameras, and GNSS positioning to get around the Formula E tracks without smashing into each other or the local scenery.
Date written: 27 Feb 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 6868
