First AV hill climb at festival

Roborace will attempt the first autonomous hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

The technology firm’s driverless race car, Robocar, will take on the famous 1.86km track guided only by automated systems at the 25th festival in the United Kingdom from July 12-15.

The autonomous vehicle (AV) will have to navigate hay bales, flint walls and forests on the Goodwood estate in West Sussex.

The announcement comes after Robocar took centre stage in the FOS Future Lab at last year’s festival.

“We are excited that the Duke of Richmond has invited us to make history at Goodwood as we attempt the first-ever fully and truly autonomous uphill climb using only artificial intelligence,“ Roborace chief executive officer Lucas di Grassi says.

The AV’s run will feature in a fully immersive VR experience in the Roborace booth.

“I can’t think of a more exciting way to celebrate our silver jubilee than to have Roborace attempt the first autonomous race car run up the hill,” the Duke of Richmond and festival founder Charles Gordon-Lennox says.

“Roborace plays an important role in the future of mobility, challenging public perceptions and providing a platform to advance new technologies. This makes them the perfect partner to undertake this significant feat.”

Robocar, the world’s first autonomous race car, was designed by Daniel Simon, the automotive futurist known for his work in Hollywood films such as Oblivion and Tron: Legacy.

The AV weighs 1350kg and is powered by four 135kW electric motors. A Nvidia Drive PX 2 computer processes Robocar’s data, which includes inputs from the Lidar, radar, GPS, ultrasonic, and camera sensors.

Development of the automated driving system for the Robocar at Goodwood is led by automotive technology company Arrival.

“The Goodwood hill climb presents a real challenge for level 4/level 5 autonomous driving systems,” Arrival software and AI chief Sergey Malygin says. “It is a narrow track with complex geometry. Turns and hills with a great deal of tree coverage mean you can’t rely on GPS/RTK signals for localisation. Use of all advanced sensors, including Lidars and cameras with deep learning-based computer vision methods are needed to perform well at this course.”

More than 600 cars and motorcycles participate in the festival, with motorsport legends and international celebrities among attendees – capped at 150,000 visitors.