By Tristan Greene
Tristan Greene is a sailor writing about consumer-friendly artificial intelligence advances, Amazon, political policy and concerning tech.
Who else cant wait for level 5 autonomous vehicles to race at breakneck speeds through public streets? Just me?
What is it?
Roborace is a racing and development platform for autonomous race cars. Its essentially a set of guidelines and hardware specifications that companies can develop AI for. According to the company:
Roboraces open A.I. platform allows companies to develop their own driverless software and push the limits in an extreme and safe environment. The series is designed to be a competition of intelligence so all teams will use the same Robocar to ensure all efforts will be focused on advancing the software for everyday road cars to adopt.
Youll notice several different appearances: the Devbot version of Robocar has a canopy that can house a human driver. This is for developmental purposes in order to obtain accurate comparisons. Plus it looks less like a Gillette razor with its canopy if you ask us.
Why does it matter?
Nvidia is decidedly amped about Roborace. In the following video theres some talk of level five completely-autonomous vehicles racing through populated city streets that might be a bit hyperbolic, but wed still rather watch that than humans navigating an oval for three hours.
Nvidias Pegasus platform and Tegra chips feature heavily in the badass racers showcased in Roborace. Thanks to its cutting-edge hardware and racing-grade intelligence, its one of the most impressive uses of AI weve seen.
If humans cant beat the robots, they should join em.
Robot racing doesnt have to be autonomous in fact another company showing off racing robots at CES was Furrion. Its mecha requires a human pilot and races at speeds more acceptable for people: 32kph (20MPH).
When is it coming?
Roborace is here now, but were hoping to see more of it in 2018. You can learn about the platform and autonomous racing here at its website. If youre more into Gundam style futuresports you can learn about Furrions efforts in mecha-racing here.
This article was published at The Next Web
Featured Image Courtesy- The Next Web