MWC 2017:Autonomous cars never had it so good. The ongoing Mobile World Congress 2017 has just witnessed the launch of a new driverless racing car by Roborace. Designed by Daniel Simon, the new concept is very similar to the autonomous cars seen in movies like Tron: Legacy. The new concept, if it sees the light of day, will pit ten of these cars aginst each other on a racing track. Experts suggest that the new technology could well make human driver redundant in the long run.
The manufacturer, Roborace, itself seems to have been inspired by the 1987 Paul Verhoevensci-fi classic, if one goes by the name. The Roborace will feature cutting-edge, futuristic technology with a total of 33 sensors. These include fivelidars, an astonishing 18 ultrasonic sensors, two optical speed sensors, two radars, and six cameras to make the driverless technology a reality. Lidar is a concept similar to a radar which uses light emitted from a laser as a guiding mechanism to make the overall vehicle a safer one and also avoid the possibility of collisions.
Bringing Driverless TechnologiesA Step Closer
The new Roborace technology will be primarily built around an onboard supercomputer which, in this case, is theNVIDIA DRIVE PX 2. This new CPU is capable of taking real-life decisions in real time and will be able to crunch 24 trillion A.I. operations every second. The Roborace vehicle will have a carbon fibre body and will weigh in at 975 kilograms. The specs of the new autonomous car are very impressive. It will boast of a top speed of around 200mph and will be powered four 300kW motors besides a single 540kWh battery. Such speeds create enormous amounts of g-force, which can cause a human driver to black out. With the car driving itself, there will be no such problems.
Roborace will debut the new cars soon. Two of the cars were seen undergoingtesting at Buenos Aires last week and one crashed. This means that while the new technology is far from perfect, Roborace has its work cut out and knows exactly where to start work from. The Roborace autonomous concept, unveiled at the ongoing MWC 2017, also seem to have been inspired by the driverless vehicles seen in movies like Oblivion. Roborace’s stated position is that it intends to bring robots and humans a step closer. When the concept is eventually launched on Formula E tracks, the hardware on all competing cars will remain the same with only the software being the clinching factor on which car wins.
