Some of the spectators described the Formula 1-style racing as complete nonsense: unmanned racing cars were helplessly spinning and leaving the track. One of them even crashed into the wall after turning too early.

How was it?

In many ways, this is a natural evolution of Formula 1 racing, given the global obsession with driverless cars. But racing is also the perfect testing ground for current global efforts to develop driverless cars; Because the industry’s brightest minds struggle to make a car complete a lap reliably.

Eight teams competed in the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League. used the same Dallara Super Formula SF23 cars. Its 2-liter four-cylinder engines produce about 550 horsepower, and seven Sony cameras provide a 360-degree view from where a driver would normally sit.

Even though the cars are the same each team had its own software engineers who wrote the code and trained the AI ​​algorithmsThus, driverless cars will be able to race on the specially built Yas Marina track.

How the race went: video

But where a person does not participate, some difficulties inevitably arise – chaos reigned everywhere.

Help, things don’t go quite as planned in the world’s first autonomous four-car ring racer. The car in front, Polimove, turned. The second car made a clear run (spectacular!) but the stewards gave the yellow and the other cars were confused and thought they were not allowed through the yellow. So the whole race stopped (less conspicuously),
– Automotive journalist Tim Stevens wrote in a post on Threads.

The audience was not impressed either.

“I love watching technology and research. But damn, it’s unwatchable,” one user commented on the livestream of the event.

Someone called the whole show “children’s science competition for millionaires”, someone wrote that, despite the intriguing concept, the whole thing was complete nonsense. As a matter of fact, when you look at the full records of the race, you can see that it is not at all like the races we are used to. But commentator Giovanni Pau, technical director of the Autonomous Robotics Research Center, told The Race that things could turn around as technology improves. According to him, in a year or a year and a half, everything will not be the same.