Roborace to benefit road users

Autonomous electric race car provider Roborace is introducing the new Nvidia Drive Pegasus artificial intelligence (AI) platform to its Robocars, the system designed for Level 5 fully self-driving vehicles.

The Robocar will be displayed at the CES 2018 technology show in Las Vegas on January 9-12.

“Roborace will enable motorsport to play an increasingly significant role in the development of technologies which will improve driver performance and ultimately save lives on our roads,” its chief strategy officer Bryn Balcombe says.

“Cognitive power will soon rival horsepower as an automotive performance measure and the Nvidia Drive Pegasus sets a new benchmark which will enable Roborace to extend competitions well beyond the confines of traditional circuit racing.”

Nvidia Drive is an AI platform that spans from the cloud to the car. Drive Pegasus was launched in October with more than ten times the performance capabilities of its predecessor, performing 320 trillion operations a second, the computational capability of a 100-server data centre in the size of a licence plate. It will substantially extend Roborace cars’ capabilities.

High-speed demonstrations of driverless technology have been brought to cities around the world.

In mid-December, Roborace’s ‘DevBot’ development car went up against racing driver Nicki Shields in Hong Kong to complete a lap of the Formula E street circuit the quickest.

Shields clocked 1.26.6 minutes compared with the DevBot’s 1.34.0 in the best of several laps, although both set almost identical lap times on one circuit.

“The advances made with Nvidia technology in motorsport will accelerate adoption of autonomous vehicles on public roads, making daily travel safer and more enjoyable,” Nvidia automotive senior director Danny Shapiro says.