Nowadays, there is a variety of fast and luxurious electric driverless cars, but none of them come even close to the “Robocar,” which is a full-fledged driverless electric racer unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
CEO of Roborace and Charge, Denis Sverdlov, talked about the development of autonomous racing vehicles saying that it was a way to create
“an emotional connection to driverless cars and bring humans and robots closer together to define our future.”
Robocar was developed by Daniel Simon, an automotive designer and the brain behind the car’s state-of-the-art features. The electric racer uses Nvidia’s Drive PX2 brain to operate AI computing platform performing 24 trillion AI operations per second. Robocar entails five LiDAR sensors, six AI cameras, 18 ultrasonic sensors, five lidars, two radars, two optical speed sensors and GNSS positioning meaning that it has all the tools to run autonomously.
The car features top speeds of 199mph (320kph), and its entire system uses a deep learning algorithm to gather 360-degree situational awareness around its surroundings, helping it to determine and create a trajectory.
Mr. Sverdlov said:
‘This is a huge moment for Roborace as we share the Robocar with the world and take another big step in advancing driverless electric technology. I am so proud of the entire team and our partners and particularly the work Daniel has done creating this beautiful machine. It was very important for us that we created an emotional connection to driverless cars and bring humans and robots closer together to define our future.”
The car is unique in its outlook and structure, from having F1 cars-like low center of gravity to a similar body made out of carbon fiber. The Robocar is said to be “a racing car with a technological edge.” The futuristic design of the car is easily explainable by Daniel Simon’s previous projects, who regularly creates such vehicles for Hollywood sci-fi movies.
He has worked for Tron Legacy and Oblivion, and that’s exactly what he had in mind when designing this tech savvy autonomous racer.
“We take special pride in revealing a functional machine that stays true to the initial concept shared,” Simon admits, “a rarity in automotive design and a testament of our determination. It’s a great feeling to set this free.”
Robocar borrows some key features from Sverdlov’s Charge, which is the official electric truck partner of Formula E. This includes the four 300 kW motors and the 540 kW battery. The Robocar weighs around 975 kilograms and measures 4.8 meters in length and two meters in width.
The firm has not revealed the cost of the car yet, but they did claim that the Roborace will continue to work on its demonstrations and testing. It looks to introduce the Robocar publicly late in 2017, with two Robocars taking to the Formula-E track together later this year.
