Let’s check in on Roborace, the robot-driver race car series in development, shall we?
Oh. It’s driven directly into a wall.
Roborace is the world first driver-less/autonomous motorsports category.
This is one of their first live-broadcasted events.
This was the second run.
It drove straight into a wall. pic.twitter.com/ss5R2YVRi3
— Ryan (@dogryan100) October 29, 2020
It’s possible that Roborace is simply learning from NASCAR and going straight to crashing.
The real joy of this clip is hearing the delay from the announcer championing the idea of the sport and coming to terms, brutally, with the reality of the sport. It was one of the first races live broadcast and you could certainly argue that it’s not “ready for primetime” as they say.
Indeed, this is “Season Beta” as Roborace perhaps wisely put it in a press release announcing its 12-event schedule running from last month to next May. Rounds 3 and 4 were yesterday and today, per AutonomousRacing.ai.
I’d argue that it’s nice to get to see the reality of robot-driving tech at the moment. Certainly, a little transparency is a pleasure in today’s world of AV hype. Roborace is taking it well, and getting out in front of the coverage:
WHATTT ???? It’s live https://t.co/LOFjjjXKkL pic.twitter.com/Jz5mxclmH5
— Roborace (@roborace) October 29, 2020
The series as a whole has been having something of a slow but steady start. When we last checked in on it, the series wasn’t exactly sure of what to do with itself. Crashing, probably, was not part of the plan.
As it is, the cars crashing or not is immaterial. If all the robot cars do is drive around perfectly, that’s a failure in my eyes. To put it more simply: they must blow each other up.