World’s First Autonomous Race Car Looks The Part

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Roborace showed off the complete design of its first race car. The vehicle, with its c...

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Roborace showed off the complete design of its first race car. The vehicle, with its cockpitless design, was penned by Roborace chief designer Daniel Simon, who’s also responsible for the designs in the movies “Tron: Legacy” and “Oblivion.”

The race car weighs roughly 2,150 pounds, yet still about 600 pounds heavier than a Formula 1 car with the driver. The Robocar is 189 inches long and 79 inches wide, which makes it just a bit longer and wider than a Le Mans prototype. Powering the car are four 300-kW electric motors backed by a 540-kW battery.



Top speed is limited to around 200 mph.

NVIDIA is the company providing the chip inside the car – the Drive PX 2 has the artificial intelligence capable of running 24 trillion operations a second. Serving as Robocar’s eyes and ears are five lidar and two radar arrays, 18 ultrasonic sensors, two optical speed sensors, six AI cameras, and a GNSS positioning system.

Roborace will eventually serve as the support series for Formula E. The company has recently ran a demonstration with two of its DevBot development cars earlier this year in Spain, and later in 2017 it will run two Robocars simultaneously on track.

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