The first autonomous car race will run before September's Formula E event.
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/technology/summoning-the-demon/
The cars look like this:
Without driver safety to worry about, they have active aero and lots of ground-effect downforce.
It'll be fun to watch for novelty value if nothing else.
Depending on how it works out, it could be interesting. You're no longer watching for the driver skill, but to see which team can design and build a better / faster car.
Fully autonomous? or 'radio controlled' by a human?
I'd be really interested in the first, much less so in the second.
If they manage to come up with some Avatars and impact/life-sign monitoring so that the virtual driver can "Die" if the accident is severe enough, and there are no rules designed to lower or control top speeds...? yeah...that could be interesting.
Not being able to complete the race would be the same as "dying".
Robbie wrote: Fully autonomous? or 'radio controlled' by a human? I'd be really interested in the first, much less so in the second.
Fully autonomous.
It will be hilarious for the first season or two until everyone figures it out, then it will probably be boring.
Then they get weaponized. And sponsored by various armed forces around the world.
So the best way to win would be to program your car to be a dick. Drive a slow and steady pace and as the field come up to lap you drive them into the crash barriers. Wipe out the competition and win by default.
I would watch if the cars were equipped with weapons and could knock each other into things. Otherwise, what's the point?
"Much about modern racecar design and construction is about protecting the driver, even restrictions on aerodynamic devices, engine performance and grip levels are designed to protect a driver indirectly."
This alone would be awesome to see. A racecar purpose built without those limitations...
Adrian_Thompson wrote: So the best way to win would be to program your car to be a dick. Drive a slow and steady pace and as the field come up to lap you drive them into the crash barriers. Wipe out the competition and win by default.
I imagine the cars would have to follow similar rules to human drivers.
GameboyRMH wrote:Adrian_Thompson wrote: So the best way to win would be to program your car to be a dick. Drive a slow and steady pace and as the field come up to lap you drive them into the crash barriers. Wipe out the competition and win by default.I imagine the cars would have to follow similar rules to human drivers.
That, or no rules. Program your your car to not fall victim to this dick driving move. Some human race car drivers are dicks too.
plus, its probably REALLY hard to successfully pit maneuver an autonomous car. It only works on human drivers because our awareness and reaction times suck.
From the article, "The whole thing becomes an engineering exercise and no longer a sport..."
This is kind of what I was thinking before I read it. It may be interesting to engineering minded folks, but a bit lost on the average spud like myself.
I'd would certainly try to watch it though.
Keith Tanner wrote: Then they get weaponized. And sponsored by various armed forces around the world.
Now you are talking! 
Could I 'drive' one of these to work while I work from home?
You don't suppose the whole article is an April Fools joke, do you?
No.
mad_machine wrote: You don't suppose the whole article is an April Fools joke, do you?
Nope it's a real thing, this has been in the works for a while.
If it's half as amusing as the DARPA Grand Challenge, I'd watch it. I love watching the autonomous beasties go berserk. Or when they just stop dead in their tracks as if contemplating the reason for their existence
An interesting novelty for sure, but I can't see maintaining interest. If they'd put up nets along the course and race drones I'd be more interested.
The issue will be the lack of divas in the cockpits, in grid and on the radio. Fans will have no routing interest of who to like and who to dislike. Robots don't care about ice cream. That being said, I'm betting on the Porsche and VW teams to win the initial races, their illegal programming skills are superior to most other teams.
I just want to hire a 14 year old to hack into the car's operational systems, and make the cars go haywire. Think Maximum Overdrive, but with these silly little cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggWS4tTzs60
the whole point of watching cars race is to see how the humans at the controls do things. to see how they pull off amazing things that could easily result in death that somehow don't result in death.
watching a bunch of self driving things on 4 wheels would be slightly less exciting for me than watching a Formula 1 race..
captdownshift wrote: The issue will be the lack of divas in the cockpits, in grid and on the radio. Fans will have no routing interest of who to like and who to dislike. Robots don't care about ice cream. That being said, I'm betting on the Porsche and VW teams to win the initial races, their illegal programming skills are superior to most other teams.
Solve that by hiring divas for team managers. Give them some sort of dumb controls like the 'spec-b' in gran turismo 4. Like telling the autonomous driver when to push, or when to take it easy, or pit, or whatever. Have the cars spontaneously and randomly not follow orders (they are programmed to win, right? who says that diva knows best?). Pick up some old french dude and have him make unconditional, ridiculous, and instant rule changes that clearly favor only one team.
Also, have lottery tickets that are pulled each week so that the fan that wins gets to be the 'avatar' of the driver for a team for the race. Fly them in to watch from a press box (they get to try to instruct the team manager what to do also from headsets, and of course the team manager can choose to oblige or not), and let the 'avatar' fans shoot champagne at each other and do interviews from the trophy ceremonies. If there is anything less predictable than putting a race car driver on TV, it is putting a 'normal' person on TV.
Basically, make a reality TV show out of real idiots, and show it on the same screen as the real race, even though we all know one really has no effect on the other. Then it'll be just like F1.
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