Driverless race car to attempt the first ever autonomous hillclimb

Thursday, 28 June 2018

Roborace - the upcoming championship for fully autonomous electric racing cars - will be attempting the first-ever fully autonomous hillclimb at Goodwood Festival of Speed next month.

The series' autonomous race car, the brilliantly-named Robocar, will take on the famous 1.9 kilometre track guided only by automated systems and, as such, will have to navigate hay bales, flint walls and forests on the Goodwood estate, using a variety of sensors that its makers say give it 360-degree machine vision around the car.

Robocar previously took centre stage in the Festival of Speed Future Lab at last year's event, so it was the natural challenger to attempt to be the first autonomous vehicle to complete the iconic run.

'We are excited that the Duke of Richmond has invited us to make history at Goodwood as we attempt the first ever fully - and truly - autonomous uphill climb using only artificial intelligence,' said Lucas di Grassi, CEO of Roborace and former Formula E champion.

At least the livestock won't be disturbed - as well as being fully autonomous, Robocar is also fully electric.

Robocar was designed by a movie car designer and is utterly bristling with sensors that allow it to drive itself.

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Robocar will make it's historic attempt up the hill on the 25th anniversary of the Festival of Speed.

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In addition to its silent, human-less run up the hill, visitors to the Festival of Speed will also be able to enjoy the hillclimb from Robocar's point of view in a custom, fully immersive VR experience in the Roborace booth, located inside Future Lab.

The autonomous run is happening at a milestone event for the Festival of Speed, as it is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, having been staged every summer since 1993.

'I can't think of a more exciting way to celebrate our Silver Jubilee than to have Roborace attempt the first autonomous race car run up the hill,' said Charles Gordon-Lennox, the Duke of Richmond and Founder of the Festival of Speed. 'Roborace plays an important role in the future of mobility, challenging public perceptions and providing a platform to advance new technologies. This makes them the perfect partner to undertake this significant feat.'

Set to run in a support series for the Formula E championship, Robocar was designed by Daniel Simon, an automotive futurist known for his work in Hollywood films such as Oblivion, Captain America and Tron: Legacy.

The vehicle weighs a fairly hefty 1,350 kg, but that weight makes sense when you consider it is powered by four 135kW electric motors - one for each wheel, making it AWD - for a combined 365-plus kilowatts. At its core, and doing all the massive processing required, is an NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2 computer that deals with the inputs from the LiDAR, radar, GPS, ultrasonic and camera sensors.

For the series itself, Roborace will provide the car with an API as a platform for teams who will then add their own AI driver algorithm to the vehicle.

'The Goodwood hillclimb presents a real challenge for level 4/level 5 autonomous driving systems,' said Sergey Malygin, Chief of Software and AI at ARRIVAL, the automotive tech company supplying the AI for teh Goodwood run.

'It is a narrow track with complex geometry. Turns and hills with a great deal of tree coverage mean you can't rely on GPS/RTK signal for localisation. Use of all advanced sensors, including LiDARs and cameras with deep learning based computer vision methods are needed to perform well at this course.'