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April 13, 2024 12:14 PM

Autonomous car racing is a rapidly advancing field that combines cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), fast mobility stacks, innovative sensor technologies and edge computing to create high-performance vehicles that can perceive their surroundings, make decisions, and race competitively without human intervention.

Previously, on April Fool's day 2012: Google & NASCAR introduce autonomous race car

posted by chavenet (16 comments total)

So we’re spending a ton of money and other resources to make slot car racing, only life sized? What a world.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:23 PM on April 13 [8 favorites]

This is the origin story for Pixar's Cars, isn't it?
posted by biogeo at 12:28 PM on April 13 [8 favorites]

Hey, at least they aren't on the regular streets killing folks. Well, maybe I should add "yet."
posted by cccorlew at 1:17 PM on April 13 [4 favorites]

"Race car drivers" was nowhere near my Jobs-Lost-To-AI bingo card. Can't say I'm terribly sad about their approaching irrelevance.
posted by CynicalKnight at 1:17 PM on April 13 [2 favorites]

I can't imagine that watching bots follow complex subroutines around a track can generate the same level of excitement as watching humans display skill and daring in the face of personal danger as they drive around a track.

Then again, look at how popular the Robot Wars TV series was...
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:27 PM on April 13 [3 favorites]

most people are just there for the crashes, right?

So no humans means bigger crashes.
posted by heyitsgogi at 1:36 PM on April 13 [3 favorites]

look at how popular the Robot Wars TV series was...

If this is a robotic engineering competition where the real achievement is in fine-tuned interacting driving algorithms and handling, it sounds like a worthy project for advancing engineering and a snoose fest for the rest of us.

If, in the absence of human safety concerns, the robot cars have a bunch of Spy Hunter shit, I'm in for season tickets. I wanna see some grappling hooks and deployable bear traps and shit.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:37 PM on April 13 [9 favorites]

I'm horrified with myself: anticipating crashes, I can't not watch.
posted by k3ninho at 3:30 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]

F1 race cars are regulated to limit their speed due to human safety factors - not just reaction times, but also ability to withstand crashes and G-forces.

It would be interesting to see in concept, cars that could go 500kmph and pull 20Gs when accelerating / braking / cornering, but not sure how much people would pay to watch.

Actually, remove the AI bit, just have the super speedy cars be remotely controlled, this wouldn't be too different to esports events.
posted by xdvesper at 4:42 PM on April 13 [2 favorites]

I love to watch something as unhinged as Group B rally even if no drivers were involved. Just to see the limits really pushed.
posted by Mitheral at 6:44 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]

So much more fun on a figure eight track. ;-)
posted by sammyo at 3:29 AM on April 14 [3 favorites]

It's nice that AI is taking over all the boring drudgery like writing, drawing, making music and race car driving, and leaving us with the fun, exciting jobs like AI training set generator and AI server farm maintenance.
posted by signal at 4:15 PM on April 14 [7 favorites]

Sounds as exciting to watch as drying paint. But an excellent platform to test autonomous vehicle systems. By that, I don't mean such systems should be trained to see every journey as a competition between vehicles (although it sounds like fun), but being able to learn the very complex decision-making rules required to travel quickly without hitting other vehicles or the environment at the highest speed possible sounds like something very useful in the development of autonomous vehicles generally.
posted by dg at 7:00 PM on April 14 [1 favorite]

NOVA, "The Great Robot Race" from 2006. IIRC, the winner barely completed the course.
posted by credulous at 7:13 PM on April 14 [1 favorite]

Fantastic, that intersection of self-driving cars (a solution to a problem that doesn't exist) and 'artificial intelligence (AI)', a thing that also doesn't exist.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:56 AM on April 15 [3 favorites]

I cover the auto industry, and I can assure you no one is interested in reading about this. Or watching it. The success of drone racing and Robot Wars is due to the human element, and that's seemingly what this series seems to not understand.
posted by jordantwodelta at 2:22 PM on April 15