Driverless Cars Get Own Racing Series

The organizers of the leading auto racing circuit for electric vehicles says it will run races for driverless cars next year. The races will take place on the same city street circuits as the existing manned Formula E racing.

The Formula E championship series which ran from September 2014 to June 2015 was the first to use fully-electric vehicles. It takes place mainly on city streets that are temporarily closed during the race. Last year’s series involved all teams using an identical vehicle, but next year manufacturers will be allowed to design their own cars as long as they meet common regulations.

Now the organisers have announced that they’ll be running a sister “Roborace” series alongside Formula E, using the same circuits earlier in the day as a supporting attraction.

There’ll be 10 teams each running two driverless cars. Officials say the races will run for an hour but haven’t yet confirmed if that’s a predicted completion time for a set number of laps, or if the race will be a time trial.

For the initial season at least, each team will use the same model of driverless car. The competition will be among the respective artificial intelligence used to monitor driving and race conditions and determine the best speed and steering routes.

One race team won’t be operated by a manufacturer or tech firm but will instead be a “crowd-sourced community team” which lets anyone contribute to developing better AI.

It remains to be seen how exciting the races will be. Driving writer Antony Ingram notes a potential limitation in that existing driverless technology is largely based on cautious driving designed to limit the obvious bad publicity if an autonomous vehicle crashes, whereas manned motor racing can often come down to human drivers judging and taking risks.