Roborace

Roborace
Series Information
Official Name	Roborace
Announced	27 November 2015
Based	London, UK
Inaugural Season	2019/20
No. Races	0
Supports	ABB FIA Formula E Championship
Current Season
Drivers Champion	{{{defendingdriver}}}
Teams Champion	{{{defendingteam}}}
Constructors	Arrival
Manufacturers	{{{manufacturers}}}
Tyres	Michelin

Roborace is an all-electric autonomous racing series, which had been set to debut as a support series for the ABB FIA Formula E Championship during the 2019/20 season. Roborace has been in development since the second FE season in 2015/16, with a deal signed between FE, the FIA and AI specialists Kinetik in the build up to the 2015 Punta del Este ePrix.

The Roborace concept will feature ten teams, all of whom will develop their own AI software to control twenty identical cars, with no input from humans once they are out on circuit. 2016/17 FE Champion Lucas di Grassi became C.E.O. of the series ahead of the 2017/18 edition of FE, also becoming a major investor, however he would step away from this role and become a member of the competitions supervisory board.

British firm Arrival purchased Roborace from Kinetic in 2020 for $10,000, both companies being owned by Russian businessman Denis Sverdlov. On 19 May 2022 it was revealed that Roborace had been curtailed by owners Arrival, who instead formed Arrival R from the remains, citing a belief that Roborace would never prove profitable.

History

Season Alpha: 2019

In 2019 Roborace held their first trial season which consisted of two teams Arrival and Technical University of Munich. The first season wasn't actually broadcast live or recorded in full length, instead short clips of the races were posted onto YouTube.

Season Beta: 2020-2021

Season Beta was announced and commenced in September of 2020, 6 teams competing against each other in another testing season, this time however there were a full 16 races and was broadcast live on Twitch. The main aim for Season Beta was to give the teams that would be competing in Season 1 enough wheel to wheel racing data to be competent into the first true season. At the start of 2021 the Beta programme expanded to seven entries, in the form of: Arrival Racing (UK/Russia); Autonomous Racing Graz (Austria); MIT Driverless (USA); Acronis SIT (Switzerland); University of Pisa (Italy); PoliMOVE (Italy); CMU (USA).

Season 1: 2022

Season 1, the first proper racing season is scheduled to start at some point in 2022 as announced by Roborace, however on 19 May 2022 it was revealed that Arrival had ended the Roborace programme.

Trivia

• Robocars track debut was at the 2017 Paris ePrix where it went around the track at walking pace for the fans to see.
• In 2018 alongside the 2017-2018 Formula E season, The Human + Machine challenge took place where the Technical University of Munich (TUM) faced off against the University of Pisa around the Berlin ePrix circuit, TUM won the challenge with a time of 1:31.59, four seconds faster than Pisa who managed it in 1:35.36
• At the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed Roborace became the first ever fully autonomous race car to complete the Goodwood Hill Climb.
• At the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed the DevBot 2.0 test car set the first ever autonomous timed run up the hill, with a time of 1:06.96 a record for autonomous cars that as of 2021 the DevBot car still owns.
• Set a Guinness World Record for fastest autonomous car reaching a top speed of 175.49mph (282.42km/h)

Gallery

Robocar

DevBot 1.0

DevBot 2.0

References

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