Italy has produced many of the fastest race car drivers on the planet, and now also the fastest car-driving AI. Self-driving software engineered by a team at the country's largest science and tech university has set a new record for the quickest speed achieved in an autonomous car – a blistering 197.7 mph (318 km/h).
Researchers at the Politecnico di Milano university worked with the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) to put a robo-driver behind the wheel of a customized Maserati MC20 Coupe. This US$243,000 fire-breathing beast dishes out 630 hp and 538 lb.ft (729 Nm) of torque from its twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6. It tops out at 202 mph (325 km/h), which means the AI stopped just slightly short of the MC20's ceiling.
The self-driving system pulled off this feat during the 1000 Miglia Experience Florida at the Kennedy Space Center on February 23. It blasted down a 2.8-mile-long (4.5-km) runway, beating the previous record of 177 mph (285 km/h) set by the same car last November.
This also bests the previous record of 192.2 mph (309.3 km/h), set by the PoliMOVE race team (a joint project between the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Alabama) in an IAC AV-21 race car back in April 2022.
Watch the driverless Maserati zoom down the runway in the video below. While the clip displays live telemetry data, two GPS units were used to precisely record the car's speed, which is just a wee bit below what appears on screen.
Paul Mitchell, CEO of Indy Autonomous Challenge, explained this program isn't just for show, but to test the capabilities of self-driving tech in extreme conditions. "... we are pushing AI-driver software and robotics hardware to the absolute edge," he said." Doing so with a streetcar is helping transition the learnings of autonomous racing to enable safe, secure, sustainable, high-speed autonomous mobility on highways."
Source: Indy Autonomous Challenge