4 ms·

Formula E to feature autonomous car racing

60 points by nyamhap 11y ago

userbinator 11y ago
I think this will be quite popular with those who like watching races for the crashes, but also don't want people to get injured.
- akiselev 11y ago
  Oh god there's going to be so many crashes... at first. Then it will catch up to EA's racing AI and become the first casualty in the war against skynet.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    The spread of self driving vehicles (and even drones) is probably an 'accelerating returns' of some sort. Such context will act as a beautiful test bed for complex and limit cases. Unless the results end up locked it will backfire positively on in-society driving.
    - quanticle 11y ago
      I would love to see a rule where the software that each team uses has to be open-sourced at the end of the season, both to ensure competitive parity between well funded and not-so-well-funded teams, and also to ensure that any breakthroughs spread quickly from the world of racing to the world of "normal" cars.
      - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        It would be interesting to have a stock car version with software open before the race. Teams could try exploits, interfere with GPS, drive evasively, etc. - arguably this will lead to greater hardening techniques, ability to cope with crashes of all types.
  - justincormack 11y ago
    If there are too many crashes it will give people a negative view of self driving cars. Perhaps Google will enter an ultra safe team that always avoids crashes but maybe never wins unless everyone else crashes out.
olau 11y ago
Awesome! Perhaps this could end up in a place where the focus is on the cars and the technical performance, rather than human driver skill. For those of us who are more interested in engineering challenges than the celebrity driver of the day.
- kayoone 11y ago
  Current F1 is going that route where the drivers are more and more exchangeable because the tech has gotten so far and fans really don't like it and the sport is losing popularity and some would say soul. While i would find autonomous racing exciting as well, it is not something the general public would be excited about.
- justincormack 11y ago
  Oh no it will be about programmer skill, with celebrity coders.
  - wycx 11y ago
    I could not find a video online, but some may remember the post race press conference when Eddie Irvine (driving for Jaguar) thanked the guy at the factory that wrote the launch control software for his great start.
copperx 11y ago
That's great! It's so obvious that it raises the question of why didn't anybody do this before?
- NetStrikeForce 11y ago
  For the same reason there's not a big market for robot fights, but then you have UFC, wrestling, boxing, etc with humans. I see little future for this. If I wanted AI races I would just watch them on any F1 videogame from the last 5 years.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Totally different. I can care a lot about car makers competing in physical although autonomous cars with technology that will possibly make it into mine. Watching a "simulation" that doesn't even simulate real motors? Where nothing can be fed back to car makers? No thanks. (On the other hand and in a weird twist of irony I can enjoy cs matches and certain kinds of sports events where my home country has a fair chance of winning. :)
- tobylane 11y ago
  The whole FE formula is still barely doable, they change cars half way because the batteries run out, can't be charged on the go, can't have batteries swapped out. It's planned to be this way for another four years. I imagine many other parts of the current, and of the AI formula, are equally only just possible now.
  - nyamhap 11y ago
    Perhaps initially races will probably go for the 25-30min that one set of batteries lasts
kayoone 11y ago
If it weren't for regulations, i am sure F1 would already be like this or close to it. Compared to public traffic, race tracks are quite easy to master for AI. They had active suspension systems and traction control in the early nineties where the driver was already reduced to mostly just pushing the pedal and steering but the FIA banned most of those driver aids because real human driving skill and error is just more exciting to the general public.
- eterm 11y ago
  Well yeah, it's not much of a sport if there's no one left driving. (Some might say it's not much of a sport anyway, but it seems popular.)
  - kayoone 11y ago
    > Some might say it's not much of a sport anyway, but it seems popular Yeah, that is another argument. Not many people understand that driving a F1 car is hugely physically challenging though and drivers need to be in top shape. Us mere mortals would be exhausted after 2 laps and could not hold our head straight for even one high speed corner.
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      Never mind that we wouldn't have the technique and balls to be able to drive around one high speed corner. Watch Richard Hammond, who's spent more time than 99.9% of us driving fast cars round racetracks, spend an entire day and not getting it quite right: https://youtu.be/EGUZJVY-sHo https://youtu.be/EGUZJVY-sHo
    - ricardobeat 11y ago
      Exactly. Anyone who has driven a go-kart in an open track knows how incredibly tough and exhausting that is already, I can't even imagine scaling those forces to 300km/h+.
- exDM69 11y ago
  > Compared to public traffic, race tracks are quite easy to master for AI. It may be easier to go around a track than drive around a crowded city, but reaching any level of mastery is going to be pushing it. The best racing AIs so far have only reached the level of an average amateur racing driver, doing hotlaps alone in one circuit. To my best knowledge, no-one has ever put two or more AIs racing on one track. In computer games and simulations, all the AIs either cheat (ie. drive with physics disabled on a pre-set track when they aren't close to the player) or are terribly bad, causing collisions whenever something unexpected happens (e.g. overtaking attempts by the player). I have never raced against a simulator AI that was any good (and I've tried a lot of different games and I do competitive sim racing). If and when this series will take place, it will be pushing the state of the art forward. There's nothing like it in existance. This will be very good practice for autonomous drivers. Multi-agent collision avoidance is a very difficult research problem and needs to be solved before there can be large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles. I presume the cars will be broadcasting their positions (and perhaps even their intentions) to others.
Spare_account 11y ago
Could we perhaps go one step further and simulate the vehicle and the racetrack entirely? SimRacer
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Totally different imo, see my first answer as for why ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640665 )
bitL 11y ago
So who is going to be interested in motorsports when in 15+ years AI beats the best human drivers? Not only the races will be boring (cheering for an automaton Lewiz Hamiltobot?), but all humans would look like total losers. The "easy" way for AI is to record all telemetry of a super fast human lap and then tweak it with machine learning for subsequent runs. No human is going to be 100% consistent all the time.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  A robotic car could do something no car driven by a human could ever do: drive without fear of losing their life. Which would allow it to take a lot more risk. Humans continuously balance risk and caution, with racing and other dangerous sports having the 'risk' portion of the equation defined as 'you die'. For a robotic car such a risk would be non-existent.
  - vive-la-liberte 11y ago
    Racing, aside from the entertainment value it provides to onlookers, also server another important function, namely to showcase cars. I think auto makers will want to keep collisions to a minimum, lest public opinion on the traffic safety of autonomous cars is negatively impacted.
  - bitL 11y ago
    Sure, but would you watch it for getting adrenaline rush from racing? At some point it would end up as who has the best "non-linear controller" wins (i.e. human is your non-linear controller now), then all of them will have it and all the tweaks will be in some optimization techniques and different objective functions. And your objective function would have to feature penalty for "killing yourself" (well, do you want to rebuild your car after each turn? I guess not...), so I would expect the cars will be actually pretty slow due to this initially, like Google's own. Human motorsports face the problem that all physical records were shattered and humans already crossed the edge of their abilities (i.e. driving 250mph on the ovals is the limit before drivers pass out)[1]. So yes, there could be something interesting for a normal human to see that robotic cars suddenly could push 300, 350, 400mph etc. But what would this do to human motorsports? Relegate them to 'meh' category, basically killing the whole sport as humans would look like kids from a kindergarten comparing to robots. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600

60 points by nyamhap 11y ago

I think this will be quite popular with those who like watching races for the crashes, but also don't want people to get injured.

akiselev 11y ago
Oh god there's going to be so many crashes... at first. Then it will catch up to EA's racing AI and become the first casualty in the war against skynet.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  The spread of self driving vehicles (and even drones) is probably an 'accelerating returns' of some sort. Such context will act as a beautiful test bed for complex and limit cases. Unless the results end up locked it will backfire positively on in-society driving.
  - quanticle 11y ago
    I would love to see a rule where the software that each team uses has to be open-sourced at the end of the season, both to ensure competitive parity between well funded and not-so-well-funded teams, and also to ensure that any breakthroughs spread quickly from the world of racing to the world of "normal" cars.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      It would be interesting to have a stock car version with software open before the race. Teams could try exploits, interfere with GPS, drive evasively, etc. - arguably this will lead to greater hardening techniques, ability to cope with crashes of all types.
- justincormack 11y ago
  If there are too many crashes it will give people a negative view of self driving cars. Perhaps Google will enter an ultra safe team that always avoids crashes but maybe never wins unless everyone else crashes out.

olau 11y ago

Awesome! Perhaps this could end up in a place where the focus is on the cars and the technical performance, rather than human driver skill. For those of us who are more interested in engineering challenges than the celebrity driver of the day.

kayoone 11y ago
Current F1 is going that route where the drivers are more and more exchangeable because the tech has gotten so far and fans really don't like it and the sport is losing popularity and some would say soul. While i would find autonomous racing exciting as well, it is not something the general public would be excited about.
justincormack 11y ago
Oh no it will be about programmer skill, with celebrity coders.
- wycx 11y ago
  I could not find a video online, but some may remember the post race press conference when Eddie Irvine (driving for Jaguar) thanked the guy at the factory that wrote the launch control software for his great start.

copperx 11y ago

That's great! It's so obvious that it raises the question of why didn't anybody do this before?

NetStrikeForce 11y ago
For the same reason there's not a big market for robot fights, but then you have UFC, wrestling, boxing, etc with humans. I see little future for this. If I wanted AI races I would just watch them on any F1 videogame from the last 5 years.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Totally different. I can care a lot about car makers competing in physical although autonomous cars with technology that will possibly make it into mine. Watching a "simulation" that doesn't even simulate real motors? Where nothing can be fed back to car makers? No thanks. (On the other hand and in a weird twist of irony I can enjoy cs matches and certain kinds of sports events where my home country has a fair chance of winning. :)
tobylane 11y ago
The whole FE formula is still barely doable, they change cars half way because the batteries run out, can't be charged on the go, can't have batteries swapped out. It's planned to be this way for another four years. I imagine many other parts of the current, and of the AI formula, are equally only just possible now.
- nyamhap 11y ago
  Perhaps initially races will probably go for the 25-30min that one set of batteries lasts

kayoone 11y ago

If it weren't for regulations, i am sure F1 would already be like this or close to it. Compared to public traffic, race tracks are quite easy to master for AI. They had active suspension systems and traction control in the early nineties where the driver was already reduced to mostly just pushing the pedal and steering but the FIA banned most of those driver aids because real human driving skill and error is just more exciting to the general public.

eterm 11y ago
Well yeah, it's not much of a sport if there's no one left driving. (Some might say it's not much of a sport anyway, but it seems popular.)
- kayoone 11y ago
  > Some might say it's not much of a sport anyway, but it seems popular Yeah, that is another argument. Not many people understand that driving a F1 car is hugely physically challenging though and drivers need to be in top shape. Us mere mortals would be exhausted after 2 laps and could not hold our head straight for even one high speed corner.
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    Never mind that we wouldn't have the technique and balls to be able to drive around one high speed corner. Watch Richard Hammond, who's spent more time than 99.9% of us driving fast cars round racetracks, spend an entire day and not getting it quite right: https://youtu.be/EGUZJVY-sHo https://youtu.be/EGUZJVY-sHo
  - ricardobeat 11y ago
    Exactly. Anyone who has driven a go-kart in an open track knows how incredibly tough and exhausting that is already, I can't even imagine scaling those forces to 300km/h+.
exDM69 11y ago
> Compared to public traffic, race tracks are quite easy to master for AI. It may be easier to go around a track than drive around a crowded city, but reaching any level of mastery is going to be pushing it. The best racing AIs so far have only reached the level of an average amateur racing driver, doing hotlaps alone in one circuit. To my best knowledge, no-one has ever put two or more AIs racing on one track. In computer games and simulations, all the AIs either cheat (ie. drive with physics disabled on a pre-set track when they aren't close to the player) or are terribly bad, causing collisions whenever something unexpected happens (e.g. overtaking attempts by the player). I have never raced against a simulator AI that was any good (and I've tried a lot of different games and I do competitive sim racing). If and when this series will take place, it will be pushing the state of the art forward. There's nothing like it in existance. This will be very good practice for autonomous drivers. Multi-agent collision avoidance is a very difficult research problem and needs to be solved before there can be large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles. I presume the cars will be broadcasting their positions (and perhaps even their intentions) to others.

Spare_account 11y ago

Could we perhaps go one step further and simulate the vehicle and the racetrack entirely? SimRacer

reitanqild 11y ago
Totally different imo, see my first answer as for why ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640665 )

bitL 11y ago

So who is going to be interested in motorsports when in 15+ years AI beats the best human drivers? Not only the races will be boring (cheering for an automaton Lewiz Hamiltobot?), but all humans would look like total losers. The "easy" way for AI is to record all telemetry of a super fast human lap and then tweak it with machine learning for subsequent runs. No human is going to be 100% consistent all the time.

jacquesm 11y ago
A robotic car could do something no car driven by a human could ever do: drive without fear of losing their life. Which would allow it to take a lot more risk. Humans continuously balance risk and caution, with racing and other dangerous sports having the 'risk' portion of the equation defined as 'you die'. For a robotic car such a risk would be non-existent.
- vive-la-liberte 11y ago
  Racing, aside from the entertainment value it provides to onlookers, also server another important function, namely to showcase cars. I think auto makers will want to keep collisions to a minimum, lest public opinion on the traffic safety of autonomous cars is negatively impacted.
- bitL 11y ago
  Sure, but would you watch it for getting adrenaline rush from racing? At some point it would end up as who has the best "non-linear controller" wins (i.e. human is your non-linear controller now), then all of them will have it and all the tweaks will be in some optimization techniques and different objective functions. And your objective function would have to feature penalty for "killing yourself" (well, do you want to rebuild your car after each turn? I guess not...), so I would expect the cars will be actually pretty slow due to this initially, like Google's own. Human motorsports face the problem that all physical records were shattered and humans already crossed the edge of their abilities (i.e. driving 250mph on the ovals is the limit before drivers pass out)[1]. So yes, there could be something interesting for a normal human to see that robotic cars suddenly could push 300, 350, 400mph etc. But what would this do to human motorsports? Relegate them to 'meh' category, basically killing the whole sport as humans would look like kids from a kindergarten comparing to robots. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600