- I got an email that said,
"Hi, we're developing a fully autonomous race car.
"Would you like to be driven around the most famous track in Britain
"by a computer?"
Sure.
- Roborace is an organisation that specialises in autonomous racing.
We develop our own autonomous race cars,
and we run a competition for teams to enter
to develop their own autonomous driving software.
We're basically trying to further
autonomous driving technology through competition.
- Now, I'm not used to anything like this.
I have never been driven at speed around the track by a human.
And I've never been driven at all by a fully autonomous car.
This is the DevBot 2, designed to take a human passenger.
Now, the stats aren't spectacular by supercar standards.
362 horsepower from two electric motors,
top speed somewhere around 135 miles an hour,
although, as I'm a civilian, I'm limited to 60,
and it will take 4.1 seconds to get there.
But, this is only the development version.
This is the version that still carries a human,
unlike its sleeker cousin over there.
- Behind me is Robocar.
This is fully autonomous, there's no room for a human.
Whereas, the DevBot gives us the opportunity
for human versus machine type challenges.
It's actually got the same powertrain on the rear axle as DevBot.
It's just also got the same powertrain again on the front axle,
so it's four wheel drive, it's got twice the power.
It's the car we use for our top speed run.
We've actually had it to up to 299 kph.
The sensors on the two cars are actually the same.
We use a military grade GPS, accurate up to about two centimetres,
so the car knows exactly where it is.
We've got LIDARs, basically on the corners of the car and on the sides
to position where all of the objects are around the car.
The third is using cameras,
and that's for using stereo vision to judge depth,
basically, in the same way a human does with their eyes.
- So, I'm about to go for a lap of Silverstone's National Circuit,
just over one and a half miles,
which will take around 90 seconds from a standing start.
- Once we've created a map of the track to say,
"These are the edges, this is where you're allowed to go,"
we load that into the car.
It then has algorithms to determine its optimum racing line.
It then chooses what speed it can go
and when it needs to brake, when it needs to hit the throttle,
based on accelerations.
And, it knows what it can achieve from the tyres.
- Now, I know, because I've never been on a track before,
that, on that first turn, my brain is going to think
that we are coming in too hot, and it's not going to turn.
And, I am just going to need to have some faith
that the system is working, and I don't need to take over control
because I am almost certainly a worse driver
than the computer in this car.
- Basically, when you're trying to do something for the first time,
you need to be very safety-conscious.
We have full live telemetry, so we can see exactly
what the car is doing at all times.
And, we have linked to that what we call a safe-stop system,
basically a button that can turn the car off
at a moment's notice from anywhere.
The car can also know to turn itself off.
If it determines it's too far off the line it's supposed to be on,
and it doesn't think it can get back there,
it it will shut itself down.
- Moving to drive now, and then moving out onto the track.
- We've had a few crashes over the last year,
and this has been our first year of competitions.
One of the crashes that we had was, basically, a hardware issue.
The hardware failed, and that led to the car believing
it was in a different place to where it actually was.
So, it acted accordingly to go to where it thought it should be,
but that was based on bad data
which then meant the car hit the wall.
- All right, I'm lined up,
and I'm going to take my hands off the wheel, and put them here,
and take my feet off the pedals. and put them on the foot rest.
To be clear, we are not going to be going over 100kph here, 60mph,
because there's a human in the car, and that's what we're limited to.
But, acceleration, braking, and G forces, not limited.
Okay, ready to go.
- All right, Tom, we're all good our side,
so if you are happy, we'll get ready for launch.
- Happy is a relative term! But yes, I am ready to go.
- All right, copy that, so hold tight.
We'll launch in three, two, one.
[engine revving]
- Okay.
All right.
And, I'm being assured that this car
is not just following a pre-programmed line.
It knows the best racing line to take, of course, it knows the track.
It's been taught where it should go,
but it is reacting in real time to the track conditions,
to the fact that it's slightly slippery because of rain earlier.
And the fact there is -- oh boy!
The fact there is --
Oh, that is a perfect racing line.
The fact there is about 70 kilos of terrified wet meat sat in the driver's seat,
because that's all I am right now.
It's the computer doing everything here,
and it sounds like an electric car.
The steering wheel is just moving for me.
This is astonishing.
- We've actually had various event formats
through our first year of competition.
We've had a race with multiple cars on the track
on that same circuit like a traditional race.
And, we've also had competitions that are far more
on a time trial basis, just trying to find different formats
and see how autonomous racing can really work.
- And then, final straight towards the finish, here we go.
- From a hardware point of view, the cars are identical.
We, as a company, run all of the cars.
The teams, basically, just provide a driver.
In normal motor sport, that would be a human being.
In this case, it's a few thousand lines of software code.
- That is amazing.
- So, if you program your car to go faster
through a corner and get a better exit from a corner,
you will be quicker on the straight. You will be able to overtake.
- Woo!
- And, that's really what it's all about.
We really wanted everyone to focus on the autonomous driving
rather than the car setup.
- Thank you, returning to base.
- The AI does have information given to it
on where the other car is, what the other car is doing.
But, at the moment, that's mainly being used for safety purposes.
We can control the car from the control room,
but we do that, as a company, for safety reasons.
The teams are not given any access.
Once the car has started its race,
it's only what they've already programmed.
- So, that was a lot of fun.
That was wonderful.
I had a great time, but I also feel just a little bit underwhelmed
because it didn't feel like there was any risk there.
And, of course, there's no risk there.
I'm a civilian, they're going to limit the car,
they're not going to push it to the edge.
But, that's because there's a person in the car,
and that's what motor sport is about.
Motor sport is about humans pushing themselves as close to the limit,
as close to the red line, as they can.
And, without that element of risk, without that person in the car,
I don't know if it'll work as a sport.
Roborace is gambling that they can move the audience's attention
from people in the car to people in the pits.
And, yeah, that was a lot of fun,
but it's a heck of a gamble.
- The whole business model relies on a successful sport,
which relies on people watching it.
So, it has to be entertaining.
We're kind of a strange mix between
a technology development and an entertainment business.
And, I think there is, actually a lot of human element still within this.
Although it's machines racing,
it's people creating the code for those machines.
Something that's forgotten in traditional motor sport,
in a Formula One team, there's a thousand people,
and you just only hear about the two that were in the car.
So, here, all the human stories are really
about those people in the background, how they've coded the system,
and they're still pushing the limit.
So, it's just, arguably, in a safer manner
because there isn't a human in the car if it does go wrong.
- Thank you so much to all the team at Roborace.
Find out more about them by putting down the description.
My heart's still going.
That was only 60! It felt so much more than 60.