Autonomous racing series Roborace has taken another step towards reality, with the introduction of “Devbot”.
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In the video we see a driver pull the vehicle down the straightaway of what appears to be England’s Silverstone Circuit, hop out, and let the auto take off on its own. As the name suggests, it’s a series for self-driving race cars, and the organizers have just unveiled the mule-called DevBot-that teams will use to develop their control software. Roborace claims that the vehicle is completely custom made, except for its cabin. The DevBot is entirely bespoke, aside from the standardized safety-compliant racing cockpit for the human pilot.
“Unlike the Robocar the DevBot has a cabin that can be driven by a human or a computer allowing teams to fully understand how the auto thinks and feels on a racetrack alongside the comprehensive real-time data”.
DevBot will break cover on August 24, during the open practise sessions of Formula E at the Donington Park. Designed by Daniel Simon, a full-scale example will be revealed later in 2016. It’s an incredibly sophisticated piece of kit and even gets its own cooling vent to ensure it keeps operating at maximum efficiency. It has a cockpit for a human test driver.
It’s nearly been a year since we first learned about Roborace, the autonomous racing series that will run alongside Formula E next season. That’s because the every detail of the auto was penned by none other than Daniel Simon, the man behind Tron’s Light Cycles as well as other futuristic vehicles. The focus is exclusively on team’s ability to program autonomous driving software into the vehicles – and as such, all cars will be electric and identical. The cars look more like something from a video game.
10 teams are set to compete in Roborace, with one being crowdsourced to allow individual developers to make their mark on the championship.
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