The world of racing zoomed its way to the future as Roborace introduced the world's first driverless electric race car, during their keynote address at the Mobile World Congress (2017) in Barcelona.
Daniel Simon, Roborace Chief Design Officer while introducing Robocar said, "Roborace opens a new dimension where motorsport as we know it meets the unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence."
The Robocar weighs 975 kilograms and is 4.8 metres long and two metres wide and is capable of a top speed around 320km/hour. This futuristic beauty marks the evolution of autonomous technology in cars and it comes equipped with an AI brain which makes use of the Nvidia Drive PX2- the open AI car computing platform to process information from the car sensors: 5 LiDAR, 2 radar, 18 ultrasonic, 2 optical speed sensors and 6 cameras and also has a 360-degree situational awareness carefully mapping the movements of the car to the minute details.
Denis Sverdlov, CEO of Roborace emphasised that the drive to create racing vehicles which were completely autonomous in nature was to bring about "an emotional connection to driverless cars and bring humans and robots closer together to define our future."
As expected the design of the car matches its impressive spec and Simon who has been credited with his work to Tron, Bugatti and Star Wars couldn't help but feel proud about this futuristic piece of design, "We take special pride in revealing a functional machine that stays true to the initial concept shared," Simon admits, "a rarity in automotive design and a testament of our determination. It's a great feeling to set this free."
On future plans, Roborace plans to race two of this Robocars on a Formula E track by July to give a proof of concept and proper execution and if they are successful it could mean a new era of unbridled possibilities for a driverless technology in the near future. Let's keep our fingers crossed, shall we?
