With driverless cars coming to the fore, it was only a matter of time until a proving ground was created. Thanks to Kinetik and Formula E, Roborace, a driverless racing car championship is set to launch in 2016. Here is everything you need to know about the Autonomous Racing Car series.

1. Racing car championships are an established sport with a really
huge base of fans and followers. The organisers have to take very
innovative and forward-moving steps to keep the sport’s spirit alive
among the fans. With driverless cars coming to the fore, it was only
a matter of time until a proving ground was created. Thanks to
Kinetik and Formula E, Roborace, a driverless racing car
championship is set to launch in 2016. Here is everything you need
to know about the Autonomous Racing Car series:
Kinetik and Formula E Announce Roborace
The ROBORACE Logo
Things began in November of 2015 when Kinetik and Formula E announced
a race championship for driverless electric cars. The historic announcement
meant this was set to be the first ever car racing series involving completely
autonomous vehicles.
Kinetik is a Venture Capital company that invests in and delivers technologies
that are geared to change everyday life. Peaking in a press release giving the
announcement, Denis Sverdlov, Founder of Kinetik and ROBORACE, said:

2. “We passionately believe that, in the future, all of the world’s vehicles will be
assisted by AI and powered by electricity, thus improving the environment and
road safety. ROBORACE is a celebration of revolutionary technology and
innovation that humanity has achieved in that area so far. It’s a global platform
to show that robotic technologies and AI can co-exist with us in real life. Thus,
anyone who is at the edge of this transformation now has a platform to show
the advantages of their driverless solutions and this shall push the development
of the technology.”
Roborace races will take place on Formula E circuits as the 3 year-old Electric car
championship takes its competition across the globe. Roboraces will be held
before each main event as a curtain-raiser on the Formula E race programme.
The first race is planned to be held during the 2016-2017 season.
By creating the autonomous racing car championship, Roborace’s mission is to
show the future of both automotive and IT industry is already here and possible.
The driverless car championships tie-in with the now-established Formula E
championship for electric cars is a perfect fit. - Just as Formula E is seen by the
automotive industry as a proving ground for electric cars, Roborace will look to
do the same for driverless cars.
Roborace Concept Car Unveiled
In early 2016, Kinetic then unveiled the first images of its concept car to be used
in the racing championship. The Roborace car is designed by Daniel Simon and

3. he is the one who gave the car its unique yet functional look. Simon is well known
for iconic movie concept vehicles in films such as Tron.
Initially, there seems to be a total of ten Roborace teams that will compete
against each other in the driverless car championship.Each team will be able to
enter two autonomous racing cars. The Roborace schedule should correspond
with the Formula E calendar once the championship is confirmed.
All the teams will have use the same cars made by the same company, but the
real-time computing algorithms and the artificial technology will be developed by
the teams for their respective cars. This essentially will be the major deciding
factor between Roborace teams during races.
Consequently, this is where Kinetik comes into the picture. Kinetik is the
company that is behind manufacturing the driverless cars for all the teams. The
vehicle will be capable of touching a max speed of 300 km/h.
As with Formula E, besides professional drivers, many enthusiastic software and
technology experts will be able to take part in Roborace. This will be possible
because one of the teams will have crowdsourced community of team members.
In addition, Charge, the automotive startup founded by Kinetik, will be the
official truck partner of the Formula E Championship for the upcoming season.
The company is going to fulfil all of the automotive requirements of the race
championship.
Roborace Car and Tech Revealed

4. Robocar. Image by Chief Design Officer Daniel Simon / Roborace Ltd.
The championship had already released an image of the concept version of their
Roborace race car in August and it looked outrageous. But a new image took it a
step further by showing all the features of the car in full detail.
The detailed image serves as a guide for fans so they can really understand
everything that goes into the futuristic-looking car. As a result, what the image
above shows is an impressive amalgamation of auto design and technology.
As mentioned above, the Roborace car is packed with every piece of tech that
might be available on the planet. The race car is covered with a large number of
antennas, radars and sensors to keep it running while being controlled from a
distance. The impressive machine also has a number of radar sensors and lidar
that have been placed all around the body.
All Set For a Driverless Future?

5. Besides this, the Roborace car also has
two units of navigation systems on the top, which will help in accurately
identifying its position. Alongside front AI cameras, the car has a little tower that
houses a 360-degree TV camera, AI cameras and status lights.
The Roborace race car is so powerful that it also has dedicated cooling vents to
keep the processor cool and keep it running at full speed.
Above all, the car will come powered by a really fast computer. To be exact, the
beast we are talking about is the NVidia Drive PX 2. It is capable of doing 24
trillion calculations/operations every second with its 12 cores and computing
power of eight teraflops.
With so much tech involved in making the Roborace Car, this driverless car race
is going to test the engineering skills of the teams instead of their driving skills.
As the Roborace Championship gets underway and develops, we here at
ROBORACE HQ will keep you updated with all the latest news and updates, so
stay tuned in at http://www.roborace.co.uk/ !