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Autonomous racing, self-driving racing or autonomous motorsports is an evolving sport of racing ground-based wheeled vehicles, controlled by computer. A number of events and series have launched, including the international Formula E spin-off series Roborace. [1] and Self Racing Cars [2] [3] as well as student competitions such as Formula Student Driverless. [4]
Autonomous racing is relatively new, and is a technology that is rapidly increasing. Roborace is the company starting the world's first motorsports series for driverless cars. [5] The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) started in 2021 and was the first head-to-head race between autonomous racing vehicles. As of July 2023, the IAC is the only active autonomous racing championship.
In early 2016, Roborace started working on world's first ever self-driving race car, the so called "Devbot." In August 2016, DevBot successfully ran twelve laps around the Moulay El Hassan race track in Marrakesh. Following battery issues in Hong Kong the team reluctantly abandoned the run. DevBot, weighs 974.77 kilograms. The majority of the car is made of carbon fiber and has four 300 kW motors and a 540 kW battery, with speeds capable of over 199 mph. The car has plenty of aids to help it see all around including six AI cameras, five LIDAR arrays, two radar arrays, 18 ultrasonic sensors, two optical speed sensors and GNSS positioning. [5] It also has a Nvidia Drive PX2 which acts as the car's brain. The driving algorithms work by first observing the entire track with its sensors and then analyzing the entire track with its AI chip to find the shortest path around the track. It will be programmed allowing up to 24 trillion AI operations per second. Roborace's DevBot looks suspiciously like a real car.
The DevBot has a standardized safety cell for a driver, and it has a seat for a driver, allowing for both human and machine to drive the vehicle. Its hardware is used for testing and development. Robocar cars are deployed at a low speed, so-called, “explorer mode” and track data in this mode by using sensors such as LIDARS, radars, ultrasonics, and cameras to determine the fastest route around the track. [6] The car's final design is to have four wheels hiden inside the vast aerodynamic scoops. It will be made out of carbon fiber weighing 2,150 pounds (980 kg) and have dimensions of 189 inches (4.8 m) in length and 79 inches (2.0 m) in width. [5]
The DevBot crashed in its demonstration race. It rammed into a wall barrier when a dog ran out into the field during its representation. [5]
Porsche is developing autonomous car technology to enable a driver to experience hands free how a professional motor racing champion would tackle a racetrack. [7] They are aiming to use software that will capture data from professional drivers as they rip around a racecourse. [7] It will then upload the data so a self driving Porsche can replicate the entire driving experience on the track. [7]
Roborace has ambitions to be the new global motorsport series, the longterm plan is to pit teams autonomous vehicles paired with human drivers against others on the track. [5]
On March 21, 2019 Roborace's Robocar was awarded the Guinness World Records title for 'Fastest Autonomous Car' after registering 282.42 km/h (175.49 mph), an average set after two runs of RAF Elvington Airfield, Yorkshire, UK. [8]
This record has since been overtaken by the AV-21 autonomous Indy Lights car operated by PoliMove (Polytechnic of Milan) and the Indy Autonomous Challenge. In April 2022, the car drove a record of 309 km/h in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. [9]
A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input. Self-driving cars use sensors to perceive their surroundings, such as optical and thermographic cameras, radar, lidar, ultrasound/sonar, GPS, odometry and inertial measurement units. Control systems interpret sensory information to create a three-dimensional model of the vehicle's surroundings. Based on the model, the car then identifies an appropriate navigation path and strategies for managing traffic controls and obstacles.
Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems to assist the operator of a vehicle. These features and the vehicles employing them may be labeled as intelligent or smart. A vehicle using automation for difficult tasks, especially navigation, to ease but not entirely replace human input, may be referred to as semi-autonomous, whereas a vehicle relying solely on automation is called robotic or autonomous.
There are a number of competitions and prizes to promote research in artificial intelligence.
Velodyne Lidar is a Silicon Valley-based lidar technology company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It was spun off from Velodyne Acoustics in 2016. As of July 2020, the company has had about 300 customers. Velodyne Lidar ships sensors to mobility industry customers for testing and commercial use in autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems, mapping, robotics, infrastructure and smart city applications. In February 2023, the company merged with Ouster.
Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.
Mobileye Global Inc. is a company developing autonomous driving technologies and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) including cameras, computer chips and software. Mobileye was acquired by Intel in 2017 and went public again in 2022. Mobileye is based in Jerusalem, Israel, and also has sales and marketing offices in Midtown, Manhattan, US; Shanghai, China; Tokyo, Japan; and Düsseldorf, Germany.
Experiments have been conducted on self-driving cars since 1939; promising trials took place in the 1950s and work has proceeded since then. The first self-sufficient and truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab and ALV projects in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich's Eureka Prometheus Project in 1987. Since then, numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working autonomous vehicles including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, Autoliv Inc., Bosch, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Vislab from University of Parma, Oxford University and Google. In July 2013, Vislab demonstrated BRAiVE, a vehicle that moved autonomously on a mixed traffic route open to public traffic.
The Apple electric car project is an electric car project undergoing research and development by Apple Inc. Apple has yet to openly discuss any of its self-driving research, but around 5,000 employees were reported to be working on the project as of 2018. In May 2018, Apple reportedly partnered with Volkswagen to produce an autonomous employee shuttle van based on the T6 Transporter commercial vehicle platform. In August 2018, the BBC reported that Apple had 66 road-registered driverless cars, with 111 drivers registered to operate those cars. In 2020, it is believed that Apple is still working on self-driving related hardware, software and service as a potential product, instead of actual Apple-branded cars. In December 2020, Reuters reported that Apple was planning on a possible launch date of 2024, but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed it would not be launched before 2025 and might not be launched until 2028 or later.
A robotaxi, also known as robo-taxi, self-driving taxi or driverless taxi, is an autonomous car operated for a ridesharing company.
Roborace was a competition with autonomously driving, electrically powered vehicles. Founded in 2015 by Denis Sverdlov, it aimed to be the first global championship for autonomous cars. From 2017 to 2019, the official CEO was 2016–17 Formula E champion, Lucas Di Grassi, who later became a member of Roborace’s supervisory board. The series tested their technology and race formats at FIA Formula E Championship events during 2016–2018. In 2019 Roborace organized Season Alpha, which consisted of 4 trial racing events with several independent teams competing against each other for the first time. In 2020–21 Roborace held Season Beta with 7 competing teams. All teams utilized the same chassis and powertrain, but they had to develop their own real-time computing algorithms and artificial intelligence technologies.
Nvidia Drive is a computer platform by Nvidia, aimed at providing autonomous car and driver assistance functionality powered by deep learning. The platform was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2015. An enhanced version, the Drive PX 2 was introduced at CES a year later, in January 2016.
Argo AI was an autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, veterans of the Google and Uber automated driving programs. Argo AI was an independent company that built software, hardware, maps, and cloud-support infrastructure to power self-driving vehicles. Argo was mostly backed by Ford Motor Co. (2017) and the Volkswagen Group (2020).
Kar-go, is an autonomous delivery vehicle, designed and built by British company, Academy of Robotics Ltd, a UK company, registered in Wales. The vehicle uses self-drive / driverless car technology to drive itself to locations where it delivers packages autonomously.
aiMotive is an autonomous vehicle technology company. The company aims works with automotive manufacturers and Tier1s to enable automated technologies. aiMotive describes its approach as "vision-first", a system that primarily relies on cameras and artificial intelligence to detect its surroundings. The technology is designed to be implemented by automobile manufacturers to create autonomous vehicles, which can operate in all conditions and locations. In September 2017, PSA Group teamed up with AImotive.
Drive.ai, a subsidiary of Apple Inc., is an American technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California that uses artificial intelligence to make self-driving systems for cars. It has demonstrated a vehicle driving autonomously with a safety driver only in the passenger seat. To date, the company has raised approximately $77 million in funding. Drive.ai's technology can be modified to turn a vehicle autonomous.
Luminar Technologies Inc. is an American technology company that develops vision-based lidar and machine perception technologies, primarily for self-driving cars. The company's headquarters and main research and development facilities are in Orlando, Florida; a second major office is located in Palo Alto, California.
Yandex self-driving car is an autonomous car project of the Russian-based technology company Yandex. The first driverless prototype launched in May 2017. As of 2018, functional service was launched in Russia with prototypes also being tested in Israel and the United States. In 2019, Yandex revealed autonomous delivery robots based on the same technology stack as the company's self-driving cars. Since 2020, autonomous robots have been delivering food, groceries and parcels in Russia and the United States. In 2020, the self-driving project was spun-off into a standalone company under the name of Yandex Self-Driving Group.
Aurora Innovation, Inc., doing business as Aurora, is a self-driving vehicle technology company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Aurora has developed the Aurora Driver, a computer system that can be integrated into cars for autonomous driving. Aurora was co-founded by Chris Urmson, the former chief technology officer of Google/Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving team, which became known as Waymo, as well as by Sterling Anderson, former head of Tesla Autopilot, and Drew Bagnell, former head of Uber's autonomy and perception team.
The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) is the main and, as of July 2023, the only active racing series for autonomous race cars. The vehicles partecipating in the IAC are SAE level 4 autonomous as they are capable of completing circuit laps and overtaking manoeuvres without any human intervention.
Plus is an American autonomous trucking technology company based in Cupertino, California. The company develops Level 4 autonomous trucking technology for commercial freight trucks. In 2019, the company completed the first cross-country driverless freight delivery in the U.S. The company's self-driving system began to be used commercially in 2021.