Robocars: The World’s First Autonomous Race Car

Something interesting came up at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. Roborace showed off the complete design of their first Robocars race car. Because this is autonomous, there will be no cockpit. The person responsible for the design is Roborace chief designer Daniel Simon. His portfolio includes designing for the movies “Tron: Legacy” and “Oblivion.”

Once this becomes a reality, the Robocars will weigh roughly 2,150 pounds. That’s still 600 pounds heavier than a Formula 1 car with the driver. It will be 189 inches long and 79 inches wide. That makes it slightly longer and wider than a Le Mans prototype.

The car will be powered by four 300-kW electric motors backed by a 540-kW battery. Top speed is limited to around 200 mph.

The chip inside the car will be provided by NVIDI. This chip, the Drive PX 2, has the artificial intelligence capable of running 24 trillion operations a second. Five lidar and two radar arrays, 18 ultrasonic sensors, two optical speed sensors, six AI cameras, and a GNSS positioning system will function as Robocar’s eyes and ears.

Eventually, Roborace will serve as the support series for Formula E. A demonstration with two of its DevBot development cars was held earlier this year in Spain. Later this year, it will run two Robocars simultaneously on track.

There’s no confirmed date yet on when a robot racing car championship will be launched.