Following a recent trend in my Tech Monday blog series, from autonomous vehicles, to autonomous motorbikes, today’s post has a combination of the two! I bring you ROBORACE.
Last year Formula E created the first race exclusively for electric cars (with human drivers). Now, after two seasons of championships, the organisers have started preparing another first, driverless racing.
Dubbed Roborace, the season will begin in 2016-2017 and before the regular Formula E race, and on the same circuit.
Kinetik and Formula E have announced a partnership with the intention to launch global driverless races for electric cars.“This new championship called ‘ROBORACE’ will provide a competitive platform for the autonomous driving solutions that are now being developed by many large industrial automotive and technology players as well as top tech universities.“
Ten teams, each with two driverless cars, will compete in one-hour races over the full championship season. All teams will have the same cars which means teams will compete using real-time computing algorithms and AI technology. (Sadly we have not been asked to recruit for this….. yet….)
Denis Sverdlov, Founder of Kinetik and ROBORACE, said:
We passionately believe that, in the future, all of the world’s vehicles will be assisted by AI and powered by electricity, thus improving the environment and road safety. ROBORACE is a celebration of revolutionary technology and innovation that humanity has achieved in that area so far. It’s a global platform to show that robotic technologies and AI can co-exist with us in real life. Thus, anyone who is at the edge of this transformation now has a platform to show the advantages of their driverless solutions and this shall push the development of the technology.
The mission of ROBORACE is to demonstrate that the future of automotive and information technology is already here and can even work in extreme conditions. ROBORACE believes that there is a lot of independent talents in the world that might contribute to this initiative. That is why one of the race teams will be organised as a crowd-sourced community team open for enthusiastic software and technology experts all over the world.
Alejandro Agag, CEO of Formula E, said:
We are very excited to be partnering with Kinetik on what is surely one of the most cutting-edge sporting events in history. ROBORACE is an open challenge to the most innovative scientific and technology-focused companies in the world. It is very exciting to create a platform for them to showcase what they are capable of and I believe there is great potential for us to unearth the next big idea through the unique crowd-sourced contest.
Below is a video you can watch about RoboRace – 300kph racing.
Would you be interested in working on an AI car? Is this a great idea for a startup? Let me know your thoughts!