Inside Roborace Documentary - Trailer and New Series 14th October

[Paul Jeffrey]

For those unfamiliar with the technology, Roborace is the world's first driverless electric racing car. Product of Chief Design Officer Daniel Simon, the Roborace series is scheduled to support the all electric FIA Formula E Championship during the 2017-18 racing season.

To put it mildly, a racing car.. no a racing series, full of vehicles with absolutely no human driver intervention is a thing of comic books from our youth. Now, with the magic of technology and some very very clever people, that fantasy has become a reality. Roborace is a brand new racing series that plans to debut during the 2017/18 Formula E Championship.

The series will feature a grid of specially designed driverless electric racing cars, competing on a world championship series in support of Formula E, the worlds first all Electric track racing championship. The car itself has been in development for some time and actually made its public debut on track at a recent Donington Park Formula E pre season test session, proving for the first time in a public environment that the technology exists to fully realise the series potential as soon as 2017.

Roborace - The Car of the Future is Here Video

With an intense design, test and development programme scheduled between now and the first race in 2017, the team behind the series are planning a new YouTube documentary following the progress of vehicle design and insight into what goes on behind the scenes back at the garage.

The fly on the wall series will debut on Friday 14th October and feature "un-edited short documentary style films" on a two week release schedule. Promising to give an "all-access look at the Roborace team working towards their first ever season of racing in 2017", it should provide some very interesting insight into the incredibly interesting technology that goes into creating this innovative new series.

Check out the 'Inside Roborace' trailer below:

Personally I'm a little sceptical about the quality of the "racing" that Roborace might produce. However having seen the car on track with my own eyes, one certainly cannot argue with the impressive technology packed into these truly unique pilotless machines. Quite how that spectacle will transfer to the racetrack remains to be seen. Roll on 2017!



What do you think of the idea of artificial intelligence racing cars? Will the racing be any good? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Gerbuho]

And someday we might have a marathon with only shoes running by themselves... Exciting!

 

[ZombieInfected]

I don't think it's a good idea to give race cars to AI just yet.

I'm joking, obviously.

 

[Will Mazeo]

*Buy a game*
*Let the AI play it for you*

No, thanks.

 

[BoogerMac]

The applications from this "research project" are endless. For this community in particular, the research could be easily transferred to racing games. There is no better way to make AI act more realistic than actually try it on a track. I'm excited for this series and what comes from it.

 

[sidewinder26]

And someday we might have a marathon with only shoes running by themselves... Exciting!

That did make me laugh out loud. Roborace is an interesting excercise but not sure it will have any level of appeal as a spectacle.

 

[Lars Hansen]

Not for me personally.
While I'm in awe of the sheer technical accomplishment, this is just a little too....weird.

 

[mister dog]

Glorified RC cars!

 

[M D Gourley]

The top image shot....is that...a screen shot from Reiza's 2017 Sim....be still my beating heart...lol...but seriously, technology awesome, visual appeal...unknown as yet.

 

[Knoxstar]

Does the car climb up on the podium or the team of people that designed it? Cool applications even for passenger cars but as a wise nerd once told me (yesterday) "for driverless cars to work, all cars would have o be driverless". The wise nerd is my son btw. It will be competition but it will not be sport.

 

[AnklaX]

I have no love for this series but seems it could have some positive impact in sim racing AI in the future. We'll see..

 

[Boby Kim]

Im getting too old for this

 

[TTupsi]

I dont think anyone involved in the series is trying to make it into a legitimate sport or spectator sport. It's purely a competition for a future tech that has endless applications not only in self-driving cars but in areas we probably cant think of yet.

I personally cant wait for self-driving cars to become a thing because I loathe everyday driving. It's boring as hell so the possibility of having a personal taxi is great. I will be following the series with great interest, regardless of the quality of racing.

 

[Grand Tourist]

The question is not about the possibility, it's the probability of succeeding

I dont think anyone involved in the series is trying to make it into a legitimate sport or spectator sport. It's purely a competition for a future tech that has endless applications not only in self-driving cars but in areas we probably cant think of yet.

I personally cant wait for self-driving cars to become a thing because I loathe everyday driving. It's boring as hell so the possibility of having a personal taxi is great. I will be following the series with great interest, regardless of the quality of racing.

I disagree. I love driving my car. It's a standard family car, nothing special. But I get it, being driven to your work in the meanwhile get some sleep or drink coffee and get connected on the net. No packed train wagon, no worries about trafic, just you and your cocoon cruising silently anonymously with tinted windows to work. No more oil, no more polution, always 100% torque, plug-in at work to load, maybe playing race games on the way home? Possibilities are endless, long term solutions could sprout from this electric race experiment. But for heavens sake, do not take away the feeling of proper driving from people who enjoy it. I am concerned that if autonomous electric cars will become standard it will be the only option at long term because of predictability. Not that I will live long enough to experience that, but I would like to teach my children the joy of proper car driving, even with a standard family car.

 

[Andy 'Mars Bar' Graham]

Stupid waste of time in my opinion. How the hell are we meant to get behind this. You don't any characters as there's no drivers, and we care far more about the drivers in motorsport

 

[Bazooka_Joe]

Stupid waste of time in my opinion. How the hell are we meant to get behind this. You don't any characters as there's no drivers, and we care far more about the drivers in motorsport

It's a perfect ground to develop AI for self-driving cars, especially around grip and handling. Different teams making the software better and better to win the race, and such technology will be used in normal road cars later on.

Agree that it's unlikely to be the main focus sport, but if brands want to participate as a supporting race to any other existing racing series, then why not? Ultimately we'll get better self-driving cars later as a result.

 

[Andrew Harper]

Well firstly I think the car itself looks pretty impressive. Straight out of a sci-fi designs book I have!

If it helps push new technologies that can be applied to road cars then that's got to be a good thing.

Same for Formula E, love it or loath it, it's pushing the barriers of electric and battery development as well.

As for caring more about the drivers in motorsport, that's only really half true. A lot of die hard fans I know support a team, they don't care about the drivers too much as long as the team is doing well. Just ask your average Ferrari F1 fan

 

[RichardHessels]

Well firstly I think the car itself looks pretty impressive. Straight out of a sci-fi designs book I have!

If it helps push new technologies that can be applied to road cars then that's got to be a good thing.

Same for Formula E, love it or loath it, it's pushing the barriers of electric and battery development as well.

As for caring more about the drivers in motorsport, that's only really half true. A lot of die hard fans I know support a team, they don't care about the drivers too much as long as the team is doing well. Just ask your average Ferrari F1 fan

Formula E is a scam, just to make us feel good. It's dated tech on Dallara chassis.
A Tesla has more advanced technology than those formula E's.
The batteries of the 40 cars get charged overnight with loads of diesel generators, because locations don't have the proper energy output needed for charging.
Those same batteries runs so hot the are cooled down with liquid CO2.
That stuff that's so harmful to "our" enviroment.

 

[TTupsi]

Formula E is a scam, just to make us feel good. It's dated tech on Dallara chassis.
A Tesla has more advanced technology than those formula E's.
The batteries of the 40 cars get charged overnight with loads of diesel generators, because locations don't have the proper energy output needed for charging.
Those same batteries runs so hot the are cooled down with liquid CO2.
That stuff that's so harmful to "our" enviroment.

It's not a scam. They are actually very wise in evolving the series in small steps. First year every team raced identical cars but every season since the teams have got more freedom to develop drivetrain and batteries, and in a few seasons we will most definitely be seeing manufacturers develop their own chassis and other parts.

It's wise because these small steps were required to get the needed public interest for the series. Now we have all these big manufacturers Mercedes, Citroën, Jaguar etc. joining the series because it has established its place. If the series had gone the route of "make a car with zero CO2 emissions" from the start, there would have been no series because it would have been too big step to most teams.

Bottom line is, Formula E is perhaps not yet the clean motorsport series it should be, but it's getting there slowly but steadily. And the large car manufacturers are playing the biggest role in that development.

 

[DaVeX↯]

Just put some weapons on it and I will follow it...without weapons, lore and destruction, robot race is useless...