AI-driven race cars test limits of autonomous driverless technology
Last weekend at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, UAE, the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League competition took place. While each Dallara super formula car looked like an ordinary racing vehicle, there was one notable difference: they were completely driverless, guided instead by autonomous artificial intelligence software developed by eight university-affiliated teams. A suite of sensors was placed where a human driver would sit, including cameras, radar, lidar, GPS and an inertial measurement unit, along with the computing power to process the data the sensors provided in real-time. The challenge for each team was to develop AI software that would allow the cars to perform on the track, completing the course in the fastest possible time, overtaking opponents and making strategic decisions to win races. Once cars are on the track, there is no human intervention allowed. Instead, each car makes its own AI-derived decisions about how fast to go, when to brake, what racing line to take, when to pass its opponents and what level of risk it is willing to expose itself to, which may be higher or lower than for human drivers.