Roborace, the driverless, electric racing series, today completed a world first by performing the first ever live demonstration of two driverless cars on the track at the same time. The demonstration took place using Roborace’s development cars ‘DevBot 1 and 2 on the city streets of Buenos Aires.
This is the first time that two autonomous race cars have been on the same track at the same time interacting with one another and it was only fitting that the feat took place in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, host to Formula E’s third race of the season.
The two DevBots, in new liveries matching the iconic Argentine soccer teams, River Plate and Boca Juniors, took to the track together driving entirely autonomously using the various sensors and systems on board to navigate the street circuit whilst communicating with one another to ensure they made the necessary calculations and adjustments to avoid any sort of contact with one another.
“This is an historic moment for Roborace and for the future of autonomous vehicle development. Seeing these two cars interacting at speed on a race track shows how fast the technology is progressing and how important a platform Roborace is for further development. It is so exciting to see these vehicles functioning without any human intervention, making their own decisions and taking appropriate actions in order to guide themselves around the track.” Said Denis Sverdlov, CEO Roborace
“The basis of competition is interaction. The ability of the AI software to perceive and interact within a dynamic environment is critical to Roborace. Today we demonstrated a major milestone in this direction with full awareness between two vehicles combining world sensing, compute and communication technologies.”
Bryn Balcombe, CTO Roborace
“It is amazing how far Roborace has come since first showing the Devbot less than six months ago and we can’t wait to see the Robocar in cities soon. Many people are working on autonomous vehicle technology, but none have achieved the milestone of putting two cars on a race track together. The development of driverless technology is a long road and it is great to see platforms like Roborace pushing the boundaries and giving other progressive companies the opportunity to get involved.”
Alex Tai, CEO Virgin Racing Engineering
Roborace CEO Denis Sverdlov will be giving a keynote address and revealing the Robocar at Mobile World Congress on February 27th in Barcelona alongside Robocar designer automotive futurist Daniel Simon marking yet another major milestone for the competition.
Roborace, the driverless, electric racing series, today completed a world first by performing the first ever live demonstration of two driverless cars on the track at the same time. The demonstration took place using Roborace’s development cars ‘DevBot 1 and 2 on the city streets of Buenos Aires.