Autonomous cars arrived for the first time this year at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, ranging from a classic Mustang that is still learning not to hit the hay bales to Roborace’s driverless racecar.
Unlike the Mustang, Roborace’s first run went pretty good, considering the challenging hill route that comes with unusual obstacles and a bad-at-places GPS reception.
The Robocar is powered by four electric motors with a combined output of over 500hp. The rather futuristic race car is fitted with LiDAR, radar, ultrasonic sensors, a suite of cameras and a GPS system. All the data is then fed to a computer packing an AI algorithm which makes the car drive itself.
Roborace became the first fully autonomous race car to complete Goodwood’s hill route. The company aims to launch a driverless racing series that will support the Formula E championship, and this run certainly looks promising as far as the tech is concerned.
Watching the Robocar driving up the hill is arguably a bit creepy, as the sight of a vehicle with no driving seat making its way is something seen only on sci-fi films. That’s not coincidental, as the car was designed by Daniel Simon, who also penned the vehicles in movies like Tron, Oblivion, Prometheus and more.
Make no mistake: the machines are coming and they’re going to be intelligent. Can’t fight the future now, can we?