Autonomous cars have not yet taken off in the real world, at least not in the reality that everyone imagines, that is, traveling through streets and roads freely and completely independent of humans.
But still, even after billions lost, the industry continues to bet on them and this has now reached the tracks, with the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL), a competition that is being born in the United Arab Emirates.
With single-seater formula cars, the A2RL had its first race on the Yas Marina Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Formula 1 track, using the standard Dallara Super Formula model with autonomous driving system, equally similar.
Using various sensors, cameras and radars, the Dallara Super Formula Autonomous carried out several tests before the race, so that its guidance systems knew the track and adjusted driving to the curves of Yas Marina.
Notably, there were skids, crashes, loss of trajectory and even spins, but the high-power onboard processors quickly learned to go fast on the Arab circuit and were certified for pre-qualification tests.
Four classified cars went to the race, which took place at low speed and one of them, the leader Polimove, spun on the track and the yellow flag was signaled.
At that moment, the other cars, with their AI’s acting in order, stopped the cars on the track waiting for the car to be removed, obeying an order not to overtake a stopped car.
Without any remote assistance in relation to the driving itself, the A2RL cars follow the programming, but can be changed by orders coming from the pits.
However, there are the rules of the race and none of them can break them. Even for such a monotonous race, there was a good crowd to enjoy a robotic car competition.
We don’t know how far they will evolve, but with artificial intelligence learning faster and faster, we believe that at least times should drop significantly over the course of the season. Who won after six laps? A robot named Tum…
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