AUTONOMOUS cars are coming to our roads. But while the first self-driving road car could take a decade or more to become reality, there’s a faster version that’s poised to replace humans much sooner.
Lucas di Grassi is a factory Audi racing driver, and chief executive of Roborace, the company pushing to develop the world’s first autonomous racing series.
Roborace has already tested what it dubs ‘Devbots’ at rounds of the Formula E world championship. The cars aren’t breaking any speed records, but have successfully lapped various circuits without a driver behind the wheel – although, there have been a few metal-bending mistakes along the way, just like human drivers.
But Roborace’s intentions, and the growth of autonomous tech pose interesting questions for motorsport and the world of car racing: Could self-driving technology be implemented on the race track? How will it learn the...