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posted by takyon on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-want-more-crashes dept.

Real-time computing algorithms will replace humans in an innovative series of driverless races to be staged alongside the regular Formula E season, promotors said on Wednesday.

The Formula E championship features 10 teams of two drivers on city-centre circuits. Brazilian Nelson Piquet Junior won the inaugural 2014/2015 world championship.

It is seen as a cleaner and greener alternative to Formula One and the news of the Formula E initiative coincides with the Paris-hosted COP21 global climate talks.

Now Formula E and Kinetik, a technology company specialising in electric vehicles and trains, will also stage races between 10 teams of two driverless cars on the same circuits as a warm-up show to the main event.

This new championship called 'ROBORACE' will start for the 2016-2017 season. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) guided one-hour races will run over the full championship.

Won't taking humans out of the driver's seat take all the drama and excitement out of the sport?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @11:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @11:19AM (#271303)

    You are aware that the technology of the race cars is not built into regular cars unmodified? Why would you think it would happen with the driving software?

    Racing would imply having the car under control in extreme conditions. A software that can have the car under control under extreme conditions certainly is also able to keep the car under control in less extreme conditions, and will be useful if the car indeed gets into extreme conditions for other reasons than being in a race.

    There will be other parts of the software included only in racing cars (as well as parts only included in non-racing cars; it doesn't much sense to add routing software to racing cars, for example; the racing track is already predetermined and need not be calculated on the fly, or altered to avoid traffic jams).

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 04 2015, @12:08AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 04 2015, @12:08AM (#271621) Journal

    You are aware that the technology of the race cars is not built into regular cars unmodified? Why would you think it would happen with the driving software?

    Are you aware that safety critical software [wikipedia.org] (don't put humans in danger) is engineered differently from mission critical software [wikipedia.org] (maximize system stability/performance to win the race)?
    Looking to the pervasiveness of sudden unintended acceleration [wikipedia.org] (not only Toyota cars were affected), I really doubt the auto makers are prepared to discern the difference.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford