The ground-breaking concept of electric driverless race cars took another step towards reality today with the unveiling of a Roborace championship prototype at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
To date Roborace has been performing demonstrations with its more functional looking development cars, known as ‘Devbots’.
The Devbots will continue to be used for development and races on the Formula E program this season with two new Robocars sets to go head-to-head for the first time later this year.
The concept is for the Roborace series to provide an open Artificial intelligence (A.I) platform with fixed hardware where companies can develop their own driverless software and push the limits in an extreme and safe environment.
Roborace became the first company to put two driverless Devbots on display simultaneously on a custom-built city street track at Formula E’s ePrix in Buenos Aires earlier this month.
Roborace CEO Denis Sverdlov, and Chief Designer Daniel Simon, unveiled the futuristic car on stage during a keynote address on the evolution of autonomous vehicles.
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The pair stressed their vision for Roborace to become a platform for the world’s best engineers to advance the software to directly benefit the development of road cars.
“The progress with Devbot on track and building the Robocar in less than a year has been extraordinary and we cannot wait to continue the journey of learning with the Robocar.” said Sverdlov.
“This is a huge moment for Roborace as we share the Robocar with the world and take another big step in advancing driverless electric technology.
“I am so proud of the entire team and our partners and particularly the work Daniel has done creating this beautiful machine.
“It was very important for us that we created an emotional connection to driverless cars and bring humans and robots closer together to define our future.”
The car, designed by Simon, the automotive futurist who creates vehicles for Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters including Tron Legacy and Oblivion, weighs 975kg and measures 4.8m long and 2m wide.
It has 4 motors 300kW each, 540kW battery, is predominantly made of carbon fibre and will be capable of speeds more than 320kph.
The car uses a number of technologies to ‘drive’ itself including 5 lidars, 2 radars, 18 ultrasonic sensors, 2 optical speed sensors, 6 AI cameras, GNSS positioning and is powered by Nvidia’s Drive PX2 brain, capable of up to 24 trillion A.I. operations per second to be programmed by teams’ software engineers using complex algorithms.
“It’s a great feeling to set this free,” said Simon.
“Roborace opens a new dimension where motorsport as we know it meets the unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence.
“Whilst pushing the boundaries of engineering, we styled every single part of the Robocar. We take special pride in revealing a functional machine that stays true to the initial concept shared, a rarity in automotive design and a testament of our determination.”
The ‘brain’ of the Robocar the NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2 uses artificial intelligence to tackle the complexities inherent in autonomous driving.
It utilises deep learning for 360-degree situational awareness around the car, to determine precisely where the car is and to compute a safe, efficient trajectory.
The Robocar is already attracting the attention of many high-profile companies with today’s launch car carrying the logos of Lego, Visa, DHL, Allianz, Nvidia, Charge and Michelin.
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