Automotive

Video: Ride along with Roborace's autonomous race car at Goodwood

Video: Ride along with Roborace's autonomous race car at Goodwood
The Roborace Robocar has become the first autonomous race car to complete the hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed
The Roborace Robocar has become the first autonomous race car to complete the hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed
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The Roborace Robocar has become the first autonomous race car to complete the hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed
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The Roborace Robocar has become the first autonomous race car to complete the hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed
The Robocar completed its first official autonomous hill climb at Goodwood on July 13, 2018
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The Robocar completed its first official autonomous hill climb at Goodwood on July 13, 2018

This weekend, the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Chichester, UK, is hosting its annual hill climb, where sporty cars old and new zip around the Duke of Richmond's estate. This year, an autonomous race car is driving itself around the 1.16 mile track, while visitors to Goodwood also get to sit in the virtual passenger seat for an immersive ride along. Now you can see exactly what that's like in a 360° video released by Roborace.

Roborace has been testing the Robocar in the run up to opening day at Goodwood, making sure everything works as it should and there are no surprises when it whizzes around the track under the ever-watchful gaze of the public. It recently completed a full hill climb ahead of its official run, and to celebrate the achievement, a video camera went along for the ride.

You can see the immersive 360° footage below (or hop on over to YouTube for the opportunity to view at glorious 5,120 x 2,880 resolution).

360 Degree Video of Robocar's AUTONOMOUS Goodwood Hillclimb | Full VR run | Roborace

The 1,350 kg (2,976 lb) Robocar has four 135 kW electric motors for over 500 horsepower combined, and feeds data from radar, LiDAR, ultrasonic sensors, GPS and cameras to an onboard computer system powered by Nvidia Drive technology.

The Robocar made its first official hill climb run at Goodwood earlier today in front of around 55,000 Festival visitors, which you can see in the video below. "We are ecstatic that the team have been able to achieve this landmark run and we hope that it draws attention to the amazing advances that are being made in the automotive industry," said Roborace's Rod Chong.

Visitors to Goodwood this weekend can catch the Robocar tackling the hill climb again on Saturday at 10:50 am (BST) and Sunday at 11:25 am. Each run will also be livestreamed on the Roborace Facebook page.

Source: Roborace

Robocar makes history | First autonomous race car to complete the Goodwood hillclimb | Roborace

4 comments
4 comments
f8lee
Well the car sure looks fast, but watching the video was a bit of a disappointment. Between the toy-sounding whirring of the motors and what I hope is just the perspective of the camera, it doesn't seem to be moving very fast. I see no mention of how fast it went (peak speed, total lap time, whatever) so perhaps it really is not that quick.
Seems to me that the system is braking too soon and smoothly at every turn rather than waiting until a later moment to brake hard, hit the apex of the curve and then punch it. So would a firmware upgrade help with that?
ChairmanLMAO
noticed a wobbling in the steering. too bad there was no speedo.
f8lee
Good point, @sugamari - I wonder if that was in fact by design
Mik-Fielding
Interesting, but having driven race cars before I'm sure that given similar parameters a decent human driver could do a lot better. It seemed rather unsure on the bends and the braking, acceleration and line (apex) on the bends were well off, like an amateur. Didn't seem very fast on the straights either. Certainly needs to learn a bit!