RoboRace is a new racing category where there are no drivers. Instead the category tests the engineering talent from each team, using the same vehicles around a circuit.
One of the best demonstrations of that technology is at the historic hay bale-lined Goodwood Festival of Speed. Known as DevBot 2.0, the current vehicle for RoboRace development and testing has just set a new record.
DevBot 2.0 is now the first ever official recorded autonomous time at Goodwood Festival of Speed. The car navigated its way around the 3.8km track, with 7 turns, in a very smart 66.96 seconds or just under 1 minute, 7 seconds. During the run, the car reached 162.8km per hour.
Personally I’d love to see all companies working on autonomous vehicles showcase their latest technology by performing a timed run. Given the powertrains are often different between auto makers, the improvement would be best represented by an appearance each year at Goodwood.
You can watch the historic time being set in the video below.
DevBot 2.0 is an all-electric vehicle, like many others taking to the track this year and the lap record actually fell to Volkswagen ID.R which claimed the new record with a stunning time of 39.9 seconds.
Given this is approaching half the time of DevBot 2.0, that looks like humans remain faster than driverless vehicles, but until we have an A/B comparison with the same car, that’s a difficult assessment to make.
