Self Driving Cars Racing Ahead
February 2017 saw the world’s first autonomous electric car race, visit Buenos Aires in Argentina. Unfortunately the event ended in a crash for one of the self driving cars as it clipped the safety barrier while cornering at over 150km/h.
The Roborace team are rightly looking at the positives – no one was hurt, and the cars were travelling faster than any other autonomous vehicles tested to date from any manufacturer, including those from Tesla.
As with any innovation development and testing, it’s often when things go wrong that you can identify issues and learn the most. The race also added data from the other side of the coin with the other car completing the race successfully while reaching a speed of 186km/h during the test.
What we are seeing here is an exciting illustration of the rapidly increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence in combination with design and engineering to create technologies that are pushing at the limits of what is currently possible – and in this case finding the edge.
Take a look at the video: