- Officially, this was the second round of the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC).
- The first lap, held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last October, was just a time trial, while two cars headed head-to-head on Friday in Las Vegas.
- As soon as the cars lapped at over 250 mph, it was not dissimilar to cheering on two “normal” racing cars that ran head to head to the checkered flag.
“Ladies and gentlemen, start your software.” And with these historic words, uttered by Karen Chupka, EVP of CES, Consumer Technology Association, the world’s first race for autonomous racing cars was started at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Officially, this was the second round of the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), but it turned out that the first “race” held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last October was just a time trial with nine autonomous racing cars racing around the area in a row the famous oval.
This time the organizers put on a head-to-head elimination race with two cars on the track at the same time – similar to drag races.
“The software algorithms required to run two cars side by side at up to 270 mph requires a significant leap in resources compared to running a single car,” said Paul Mitchell, president and CEO of Energy Systems Network, the company that runs it the IAC manufactures. before the racing action started on January 7th.
Halo, the driverless Kia pace car, was controlled remotely.
John Rettie
Halo, a driverless Kia remotely controlled by an engineer sitting in front of a monitor in the media room, served as the official pace car and led each of the teams out of the pit lane to do warm-up laps at speeds of 65 to 80 mph could complete the beginning of each round. The Kia engineer / pilot communicated with the modified car via T-Mobile’s 5G network.
All autonomous racing cars are based on a modified Indy Lights racing car from Dallara and are powered by a 2.0-liter turbo engine from Honda (K20C) with 388 hp. Each cockpit is filled with identical electronic viscera, including three lidars, three radars, six cameras, computers, and sensors. Coincidentally, all of all of this electronics weighed the weight of a human driver, which meant that Dallara didn’t have to do much on the suspension rework.
The racing cars were programmed to turn faster and faster laps. On each lap, the car in front was the defender and it was up to the second car, the attacker, to safely overtake the defender. If this succeeded, he became the defender and the other the attacker. It could only be passed along the front straight.
Sounds boring, but in reality the last race in which the two cars (PoliDRIVE and TUM), which had also proven to be the fastest in Indy, pitted was anything but boring.
As soon as the cars lapped at over 250 mph, it was not dissimilar to cheering on two “normal” racing cars that ran head to head to the checkered flag. In the end, the race ended when a simple robot mistake caused the TUM car that had just been overtaken to crash onto the lawn at the start / finish line. Amazingly, he managed to control spin without hitting the wall. Thereafter, after watching the video, one of the team members said that TUM simply entered a little too much steering correction, which caused it to spin at almost 270 mph as it exited the fourth corner.
PoliDRIVE and TUM fought several rounds before the TUM ran out.
John Rettie
The winning car finished the lap, but came to a stop at turn four when it sensed that the other car had gone off the track. The two cars were then allowed to make their way to the start / finish line to receive their prizes – a check for 150,000 US dollars for the winner PoliDRIVE and 50,000 US dollars for the TUM runner-up. TUM won $ 1,000,000 by taking first place on Indy and is now adding $ 50,000 to its winnings.
A jubilant Prof. Sergio M. Savaresi, founder of the winning team at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, said: “We are Italians – racing is in our blood” What do some of these students bet on to work for Ferrari’s F1 team? Several students and faculty from the University of Alabama also supported the Italians.
The TUM, one of Indy’s big awards, was developed by students at the Technical University of Munich in Germany.
OK. So what does it all really mean in the real world?
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Software and mechanical engineers have been working on autonomous vehicles for over three decades. But it wasn’t until 2005 that the true capabilities of autonomous vehicles came to fruition in the DARPA Grand Challenge, when Stanley, a VW Touareg converted by Stanford University students, completed an off-road course south of Las Vegas.
Since then, dozens of companies have worked to develop an autonomous vehicle for everyday use. Needless to say, for anything other than low speed delivery and use in controlled environments, the task has proven to be much more difficult than expected.
These IAC racing cars help engineers develop ever faster response times and the ability to capture numerous inputs such as surface changes, wind, and proximity to other vehicles at much higher speeds.
As Mitchell says, “This is bringing auto racing back to its roots as a great arena for pushing the boundaries with new technology.” He even sees some transitions to normal, human-powered racing cars. “Some of these algorithms could be tweaked to make Formula 1 cars faster and safer by providing real-time inputs.” Perhaps that’s why we got Sam Schmidt, the owner of the IndyCar range from Blueprint Racing who lives in Las Vegas, in seen the boxing eagerly watching the action. We bet there were other less recognizable members of the racing team in attendance as well.
On the other hand, maybe we are witnessing the beginnings of real autonomous racing with multiple cars? Possibly. Surprisingly, seeing two driverless cars drive past each other on an oval track at 160 mph was pretty epic.
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