Page 33 - EE Times Europe Magazine – June 2024

EE|Times EUROPE 33

Racing on Algorithms

Autonomous action: Indy Autonomous Challenge race cars (Source: Indy Autonomous Challenge)

THE NEXT MOVE Las Vegas track at night to demonstrate the cars’ capabilities.
The ability—or inability—to predict a nearby car’s next move has Working with industry players, IAC engineers drastically revamped
influenced autonomous racing, and competitor numbers, from the the vehicle and designed a digital-twin simulation model. The new
word go. The first IAC race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2021 platform comes with 360° long-range LiDAR, advanced 4D radar,
was intended to be a 10-vehicle competition with cars running mere updated wireless communications and GPS, and a drive-by-wire system
centimeters apart but was scaled back to a time trial, although two-car with independent actuation for front and rear brakes. Industry partners
races soon followed. on the project included Japanese tire giant Bridgestone, U.S. commu-
A recent four-car race held by the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing nications heavyweight Cisco, U.S. LiDAR developer Luminar, Italian
League (A2RL) also suffered a few false starts. The competing teams automotive tech company Marelli and German software developer
were PoliMOVE; TUM Autonomous Motorsport; Unimore, from the dSPACE.
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia; and Germany’s Constructor “We’d found that the actuators we’d had for oval racing were getting
University. The cars didn’t reach their usual high speeds, and the race pushed to their limit on the road courses, so we put in more powerful
was punctuated by stops, restarts, bumps and spins. TUM eventually actuation, and braking bias with front and back braking,” Mitchell said.
came in first; PoliMOVE failed to finish. Despite the setbacks, “The new actuation drive-by-wire system is tighter, for more precision
Hoffmann said the TUM team was “happy with the result” and braking and steering.”
expressed hope that the next race would “show the full potential of Teams are now adjusting to these changes with the next challenge
autonomous racing, with lots of overtaking maneuvers.” being an autonomous hill climb at the U.K.’s Goodwood Festival of
Like the competitors in the single-car time trials at Monza, the A2RL Speed later this year, Mitchell said. He believes the precise control
teams grappled with GPS intermittency and localization issues. But delivered by the AV-24 will eventually lead to more Formula 1-style
a four-race presents different challenges than a time trial or two-car dog-fighting, with sophisticated maneuvers and close encounters on
race. “There are situations where you have a car before you and behind the track—glimpses of which were seen with the Las Vegas overtake.
you, and your car needs to take that into account when planning its But is it realistic to expect an AI-driven autonomous race car will
decisions,” Hoffmann said. “This adds a lot of complexity.” ever match the performance of a human-driven car? In a 45-minute
The complexities aside, Hoffmann believes putting more cars on the “human versus AI” race at the A2RL event, former F1 driver Daniil
track is the future of autonomous racing. “Now that we’ve tried it, it is Kvyat beat his autonomous competitor by just over 10 seconds.
definitely the way to go,” he said. PoliMOVE’s Savaresi reckons there’s room for improvement and
Savaresi agreed. “The quantum leap in autonomous racing was from predicts AI-drivers will match F1 world champion Max Verstappen’s
one to two cars, not two to four cars—this is an evolution,” he said. ability “to drive and keep a car to its limit” in the next decade. Mitchell
“From a technology point of view, we are ready to run four cars.” also believes autonomous race car technology will help the likes of
Mitchell confirmed the IAC would add more cars to its races, but he Verstappen raise their fastest speeds from around 235 mph to perhaps
would not be drawn on when this could become the norm. “Our racing as high as 300 mph.
format will be defined by how we see our teams progress during testing But for Hoffmann, track interaction remains the real challenge.
this summer, “ he said. “Formula 1 races have 20 cars on a track, and this is where we want to
But more of these multicar races could arrive sooner than later, if go. We’re moving in the right direction, but it’s a long road.” ■
this year’s CES launch of the IAC’s AV-24 next-generation platform is
any indication. As part of the launch, three of the new cars circled the Rebecca Pool is a contributing writer for EE Times Europe.

www.eetimes.eu | JUNE 2024