The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) will stage a series of high-profile unmanned races at the Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit in the United Arab Emirates, using cars from Japan's premier open-wheel category, Super Formula, which can travel at over 280 km/h.
The first event is scheduled for April 27 and is designed to showcase the extraordinary speed of autonomous driving, bringing together the world's best computer scientists, coders and developers.
The goal is to reshape the future of mobility by combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence with next-generation sensors and computing technologies. There's a $2.25 million prize pool up for grabs as teams battle to make their cars faster and smarter than their opponents.
The A2RL concept comes from the ASPIRE Group, the program management arm of the UAE capital's Advanced Technology Research Council. “This is a long-term investment,” says Tom McCarthy, executive director of ASPIRE. “There have been attempts to do this, such as the Indy Autonomous Challenge and Roborace, but the big challenge has yet to be met.”
“They have made great strides and we build on their work, but what we want to see is a process that continues for many years. We want a process that sees the development of the technology and its application on the road. We are making this real : Racing in public and creating something that is fun. This way we can advance science and technology, as well as consumer acceptance. We want to make sure that our audiences, both at the track and online, have an experience rich and fun.”
The Dallara EAV24 chassis, based on the Super Formula SF23 design, will be powered by a turbocharged four-cylinder racing engine, based on a two-litre Honda unit, which will deliver power through a six-speed gearbox.
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The cars will be equipped with seven Sony 360-degree cameras, four ZF ProWave radars, three Falcon Kinetic lidars, a high-level Neousys on-board computer with GPS. The car has already been tested on track in Dubai with a real driver – former Red Bull F1 driver Daniil Kvyat – but the cockpit area of the cars is now full of electronics ahead of the races. This “autonomous racing stack” will move the car around the track thanks to a drive-by-wire system that operates normal controls.
“It will be like doing a science experiment in public,” McCarthy said. We wanted a car that had a real pull factor and Japanese Super Formula was perfect because last year they had just presented a new Dallara chassis that we could develop for autonomous driving. The autonomous stack senses the environment, sends signals to the computer and then the real challenge for the teams is to program it to act on all those signals and give instructions to the actuators to control the car.
“The challenge for coders is to fuse all the available data and exploit it to make the car operate autonomously. Once the car turns on, it is on its own: no one can interfere with it. The only external control, from the team or race control, is the instruction to stop for safety reasons. The car must complete track operations on its own, such as overtaking another car. We will put the cars together and ask them to doing things autonomously, inviting the public to see what happens. We believe this can lead to acceptance of what is really possible.”
In addition to launching its new motorsports series, with multiple cars on track at the same time, A2RL is designed to be a research and development platform capable of advancing the field of autonomous technology. “In organizing a motorsport event, the big challenge we are trying to address is road safety,” McCarthy added. “We have seen enormous advances in the technology of the cars that everyone drives, but we have not seen a substantial decrease in traffic accidents and deaths, which remain stubbornly high.”
“We believe the main reason is the large gap between what the car can do and what the average driver can do. Cars are safer in the event of an accident, minimizing the consequences thanks to containment zones and airbags , but what we will focus on is avoiding the accident. Autonomous robotics and artificial intelligence can bridge this gap between the car and the driver, to achieve safer outcomes on the roads.”
“Getting to this point is not easy. We believe that cars of the future will continue to be driven by humans and that driverless cars or taxis will be a minority, probably in urban areas, and will go very slowly. At least in the next ten or twenty years. We want to focus on active driving. So, in the real world, we don't want to take the driver out of the car, but make it safer. To realize the potential, we need to push technological advances and make drivers see this technology in action to accept it.”
To create the competition, teams from the United Arab Emirates, China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States were brought together. These will start with access to the software provided on board the cars, which they can then build on or replace as they see fit.
ASPIRE promises a “mixed picture” of race formats to demonstrate the concept of what it is trying to accomplish. If successful, ASPIRE hopes to expand into a future racing calendar with events in Europe and Asia, as well as expanding into off-road buggy and drone racing in the future.
“Ultimately, we also want it to feel like a gaming experience,” McCarthy said. “We've developed a VR camera to put in cars, so people can have a virtual reality experience, and we've developed an app and process that allows you to get into a ghost car and race against what happens on the track. One such vision would be to see monthly races in a virtual world taking place in parallel to the three races we hold per year. We would like to create an entire ecosystem around this race, so that it is fun, educational and developmental.”
Visit A2RL.io for more information.
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