zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Racing
/
The World's First Driverless Racing Series Will Run Its Opening Season With Human Drivers
The World's First Driverless Racing Series Will Run Its Opening Season With Human Drivers-September 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:11:13

follows the trends of the auto industry, for better or worse, and that includes . But the won’t go full computer right away—its inaugural 2019 season will have humans behind the wheel, tag teaming races with the artificial intelligence in the car.

The idea for the planned Formula E support series, Roborace, has been public for a few years now with one main goal: to put electric self-driving cars on a track and have them learn how to be competitive. Outside of that, its leadership on where to go with it. In 2017, a number of ideas were on the table—obstacle courses, points for certain dangerous maneuvers, tracks that change each lap, or just regular races. They weren’t sure what to do, but wanted Roborace to be “like a circus—a super high-technology one.”

But one thing seems to be for sure, at least for the series’ first season: The cars will have drivers. It won’t be a bunch of self-driving cars chauffeured around a track by humans, though—according to , it’ll be a team effort between a driver and an AI computer that trade off in the driving role.

Motorsport.com reports that the plan is for the opening season to start early next year, and that and Formula E champion Lucas di Grassi said everything is “on schedule” for the series’ first event. From Motorsport.com:

“The essence of the racing will be of humans and intelligent machines working together for the best racing outcome,” di Grassi wrote in this week’s edition of Autosport Engineering magazine.

“Yes, there will be a human professional driver inside the car driving, ‘teaching’ the machine for part of the race.

“The rest will be taken over by the machine learning algorithms, or an ‘AI driver’.

“The winner will be the best combination of both. You can think of it as two drivers sharing a car in an endurance race, but in this case one is the machine itself!”

Motorsport.com reports that the look of the cars for the opening season isn’t public yet, since the that the series uses promotionally for a human driver.

But di Grassi said hardware will look almost identical on vehicles, and that the 2,200-pound cars will have two motors making about 400 brake horsepower. (For comparison, the new production Mazda Miata and has 181 HP.) The software will be where teams can invest, di Grassi said, to “have some form of differentiation” between cars.

It’s safe to say that if humans will be in the cars for at least the first season, Roborace won’t go with some of its circus-like ideas for competitions. After the humans are gone, though, maybe this stuff will turn into some form of Mario Kart! Live. It sounds like a Vegas show already.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Racing
Local Businesses Want Compensation After Allegedly Losing Money During Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix
Local Businesses Want Compensation After Allegedly Losing Money During Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix
If you listen to Formula 1 or local officials from Las Vegas and Clark County, you’d probably think November’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix was a success. Some sources estimated that the city of Las Vegas made over $1 billion in revenue from the event — but there were...
Sep 19, 2024
Get Ready To Spend All Your Money On Retro Formula 1 Merch
Get Ready To Spend All Your Money On Retro Formula 1 Merch
Fellow nerds, get ready to open your wallets, because I’ve found what may be the greatest store of all time. With designs from Formula 1 teams like , you’re sure to find something that fits your particular nostalgic niche. I’d like to introduce you to Racing Retro. I first...
Sep 19, 2024
After Delivering 8 Seasons At The Back Of The Grid, Haas F1 Team Dumps Guenther Steiner
After Delivering 8 Seasons At The Back Of The Grid, Haas F1 Team Dumps Guenther Steiner
The partially North Carolina-based squad has determined that after , it needs to mix things up a little. The team’s firebrand has been following an abysmal 2023 season which saw the team score just four points-paying finishes. The team’s , where scored a fourth-place finish, but that season too...
Sep 19, 2024
You've Probably Never Heard Of The Coolest Canadian Car Ever Built
You've Probably Never Heard Of The Coolest Canadian Car Ever Built
Name a car from the early 1960s built by a famed racing driver with curvy, lightweight aluminum bodywork, a big American engine, and a reputation for being unruly and fast as all hell. Your first thought was probably the famed Shelby Cobra, did you know there was a who...
Sep 19, 2024
Race Team Would Rather Create A Fake AI Woman Rather Than Hire A Real One
Race Team Would Rather Create A Fake AI Woman Rather Than Hire A Real One
In another unsurprising example of motorsport’s inhospitable mindset toward hiring competent women, the Racing team has announced a new partnership with Ava Rose, a literal , who will... engage with fans? Share knowledge about technology? “Navigate the cutting edge of innovation to create positive change” (whatever that means)? I...
Sep 19, 2024
Listen To In-Car Audio From Race Cars While You Work
Listen To In-Car Audio From Race Cars While You Work
If you follow racing in the U.S., you probably already know about the . Most of the episodes are too much of a distraction to put on as background noise while you work, but a couple of recent entries in his series have been working incredibly well for me....
Sep 19, 2024
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved