Andrew Wade

Roborace hopes 'AI drivers' can replicate F1 greats

In-Depth

Not having humans at the wheel provides degrees of freedom that traditional motorsport simply cannot allow. It’s a concept taken to the extreme by Roborace, a new motorsport series where humans not only aren’t on board, but aren’t even in direct control

Set to make its debut in the coming months on the Formula E undercard, Roborace will feature 200mph driverless cars autonomously controlled by artificial intelligence (AI). As with the Drone Racing League, all vehicles will be identical, but software engineers will compete with ‘AI Drivers’, where algorithms and feedback loops will replace human instinct and reaction speeds.

“The primary focus is on the ability of the AI Drivers to perceive and act within the dynamic environments that we create,” Roborace chief technical officer Bryn Balcombe explained.

“If an AI Driver is more accurate in perception it has a better chance of taking the correct actions.

“It’s the ground-based equivalent of a military dogfight with AI Drivers continually engaged in an OODA Loop [observe, orient, decide, and act]. The key challenge is to get inside the OODA loop of a competitor to gain an advantage.”

Feeding the big brain

Those feedback loops will be powered by the Nvidia Drive PX2, a processor capable of 24 trillion AI operations per second. Feeding that big brain will be a massive sensor suite made up of five lidar, two radar, 18 ultrasonic and two optical speed sensors, as well as six cameras and a GNSS module.

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