Formula E is a newly established FIA (FIA) championship. Unlike Formula 1, Formula E's cars are fully electric powered and are therefore called "zero emissions" events.
The first stop of the first season began in September 2014 in the Bird's Nest in Beijing and ended in June 2015. The racetrack was chosen on the streets of major cities in the world, and the first year of the race attracted car enthusiasts everywhere.
In December of last year, FIA announced that Kinetik, a joint technology investment company, will launch Roborace, a driverless series, and hopes to formally hold it in the next two years. The event consists of 10 teams, each with 2 cars, and is expected to compete for an hour long before the Formula E race begins.
This will be the first time in the world that there will be a driverless car race. The introduction of Roborace will make the Formula E event more technologically sound.
According to the information disclosed so far, since the vehicles provided by each team are the same, they are customized by the organizer (possibly different). Each team only needs to focus on the development of artificial intelligence and navigation algorithms, so there are comments that Roborace will be a contest between the programmer and the programmer.
A spokesperson for Kinetik said that Roborace's maximum speed can reach 300km/h. The world’s fastest driverless vehicle is the Audi Robby. It was developed by Audi’s RS 7 and has a top speed of 240km/h.
In April of this year, Daniel Simon, the chief designer of the Roborace event, announced the conceptual design of the car. He had previously designed several concept cars for the two Hollywood blockbusters: "Creation: Wartime" and "Leaving the Battlefield."
The concept car body covered with sensors, including the front of the ultrasonic sensor, on both sides of the front face of the camera and the front face on both sides and the rear of the lidar and so on.
The Roborace car should be officially unveiled at the end of this year or early next year, but since it is still in the prototype stage, there may be differences in the appearance of the car.
Simon once told the media: “My goal is to create a car that makes full use of this unmanned feature, and it does not compromise on aesthetics. Roborace is both competitive and entertaining, and it is quite quiet. we strive to future performance and style together. "but Simon and undisclosed dynamic parameters of this car.
Chip vendors participate in Roborace
Then in April, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that the Roborace driverless car will use the NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2 as a computing platform.
Earlier this year, the Drive PX 2 debuted at the CES in the United States, but Nvidia only announced details of this product at the GTC 2016 conference:
Tegra X1 is used in the CPU part;
The GPU part is two Pascal MXM interface graphics cards, equipped with 4GB GDDR5 memory, clocked at 1.25GHz, and is expected to be the GP106 core;
The platform has built-in 8GB LPDDR4 memory and consumes about 250W of power.
In order to solve the problem of heat dissipation, Nvidia has equipped it with a liquid-cooled system that can operate at an ambient temperature of up to 80 degrees. The official said that the device has 8 petaflops per second and 24 trillion operations per second, and can integrate a variety of information including radar, laser radar, camera, GPS and high-definition maps.
All in all, the DRIVE PX 2 is very powerful and at the same time expensive. It is expected that the shipment price will reach 15,000 US dollars (approximately 97,000 yuan). But for these cars, 20 cars are competing at the same time in the real arena, and they are different from cars driving on the freeway. Therefore, the performance of the Drive PX 2 is very important.
Official Roborace Partner
In addition to NVIDIA, chip giant Intel recently announced the acquisition of Yogitech, an Italian semiconductor manufacturing company that specializes in the development of chips for robots, driverless cars and other automation equipment. Intel expressed its hope that Yogitech's chip technology will be transplanted into the driverless automotive system chips it is developing.
Judging from the current trend, there will be more chip manufacturers entering the unmanned field in the future. Compared with traditional auto companies, they have stronger professional strength. However, it is also good news for automakers: to help them reduce the cost of research and development of driverless cars, and to accelerate the pace of research and development.
Qualcomm's Halo Wireless Charging Technology
In addition, mobile chip giant Qualcomm also participated in this event, after it launched its Halo wireless charging technology in the Formula E race. The safety car BMW i8 uses this charging method.
Roborace prototype debut
DevBot prototype
Roborace is expected to debut during the 2016-2017 Formula E season. A few days ago, the R&D team showed people the latest prototypes. This DevBot will become a driverless test car that can support basic hardware and software.
The latest news is DevBot’s first public appearance with Formula E at the Donington Park Circuit practice race in the UK on August 24. Roborace said that next they will give researchers from science and technology, automobiles, motorsports, and universities six months to further develop this prototype. As for details, Roborace did not disclose more.
Auto racing has always been the experimental field for automakers. They apply the latest technology to the races, conveying their own car concepts to consumers and demonstrating their own technological accumulation. For example, DSG dual clutch technology, direct injection of cylinders, and body electronic stability systems are all developed from racing competitions.
At present, Formula E has played a significant role in the field of electric vehicles. The introduction of Roborace will also promote the development of driverless technology. Compared with roads, the advantage of the former is that the test is relatively unconstrained and can prove to the consumer the safety of the driverless car and the performance of the driverless car.
According to the current trend, there will be many traditional car manufacturers participating in the Roborace competition in the future, laying the foundation for accumulating technology for the promotion of their auto-driving cars.
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