The Autonomous Racing League Is a Reality. Do You Care?
You may not be aware that history was made last weekend, but apparently quite a few techno-geeks did: It was the inaugural event of the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League at the Yas Marina road course, with eight driverless formula cars from around the world competing, or trying to, as the event revealed that autonomous racing isn’t quite ready for prime time.
That said, the Autonomous Racing League claims that 10,000 spectators watched the event in person, while over 600,000 watched it online. Since the broadcast was more than three hours long, and the actual race was just eight laps among four cars, with two that actually finished, it took some stamina to watch the whole show.
That broadcast was decidedly of the rah-rah variety, including contributions from American broadcaster Amanda Busick, absent from her usual role as pit reporter for the NHRA drag racing. It was a “stupendous weekend!” for the Autonomous Racing League’s inaugural event, Busick posted on her Instagram account. “Hard to verbalize how professionally satisfying this experience was.”
Competing were modified versions of the Dallara Super Formula SF23 car, which is described in the press release as being “the fastest open-wheel race car in the world after Formula 1,” which is probably surprising to IndyCar given these SF23s are powered by a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine.
In one time-filling segment, former Formula 1 driver Daniil Kvyat raced against one of the autonomous cars, provided by the Technology Innovation Institute, and beat it by 10.38 seconds. That would normally be a substantial margin, but the Autonomous Racing League described it as “a narrow victory.”
There were multiple qualifying sessions, in which one autonomous car simply turned right into a barrier along a straightaway, and another car locked up all four wheels and braked to a dead stop as it approached a left-hand corner. “It appears to be a coding error,” we were told repeatedly when a car misbehaved.
By the time the eight-lap race was ready to run, only four cars made it to the starting line, and two of them seemed to disappear from the broadcast, as cameras concentrated on the race between TUM, the car entered by the Technical University of Munich, and an Italian entry named UNIMORE. TUM passed it on the last lap when UNIMORE simply stopped on the track, right in the racing line.
Still, the organizers were jubilant. Said H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of the Advanced Technical Research Council: “Through the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League, we’ve sparked a race revolution … This event isn’t just a race; it’s a transformative moment where technology, imagination, and ambition converge.”
Much can be excused for an inaugural event of this sort: The technology, though unreliable, was impressive, and it’s easy to imagine it improving dramatically over the next few years. But the question remains: Can you get excited by a race with cars driven by AI instead of a person?
You can watch the three-hour, 12-minute Autonomous Racing League broadcast here.
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Yawn…….
I’m in for the crashes!
No one yo get hurt.
I’m all in for the crashes.
No one to get hurt.
A race without a race car driver is just silly. It’s the interaction between driver/car/team/track/and other racers that makes it all work. Take any one of those elements out, and it’s just playing with toys on the carpet.
Having said that, we did have an RC semi-truck once that was fun to play with on the carpet in the living room – for about 15 minutes.
Double yawn…
No people in cars racing is boring but I can see where this may eventually help manufacturers with their autonomous dreams. Not going to watch unless there are spectacular, ridiculous crashes like I would do in a video game.
And there’s a fight
The Autonomous Racing League Is a Reality. Do You Care?
Nope.
I would assume none of the cars would exceed any speed limits and if the lane keeping is activated along with the blind spot monitor, this race could take all day for a couple of laps to happen. At the end did they self-park?
lots of $$$,$$$.$$ spent for ???? results of technology advancements???? No woman allowed on the GER. team!!!! Almost as fast as F1???? I guess if you got $ to blow, blow it out da exhaust pipe until it fails.
I had to check and see if this was posted on April 1st,
and at least Max didn’t win.
Is that R2D2 in the pilot’s seat now? Think slot-cars, taken large! Dumb.
I sure hope they don’t unleash auto-nutty semi-trucks on us! Now that’s scary! Hope I’m not in the way when Murphy’s Law finally kicks in!
Even trains on rails still need an engineer, don’t they? Or no?
As a matter of ultimate geekdom its cool. Like NASA choosing to suddenly take a detour and target an asteroid that’s so small and so many million miles away that almost nobody except them knows about. Then they do just that. But here on planet earth… the human element has been removed…. and I’m only human…and a race car has a driver by definition. We should put that in the rule book.
Once the initial novelty factor wears off, I can see this getting a cult nerd following like robot wars. I really don’t see that fanbase being sufficient to carry something this expensive into the future though. I could see this being envisioned as a development platform for autonomous platforms, but there are flaws here too as the course is predetermined, there are no pedestrians, and the only thing the cars have to keep track of is each other
I cant say it is super exciting for me personally but I love to see people trying new things and I do LOVE cars and trucks and technology.
I have been involved with Stupid fast cars and trucks for years and still drag a knee today- I just wonder if they will try to make a cycle race with autonomous machines ?
Whatever floats your boat I say !
Anything that hints at self-driving vehicles immediately opens a big hole in the bottom of my boat. 👎