The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) race took place at the Yas Marina racetrack yesterday with it being the world's first self-driving car race. It however did not go smoothly with various issues arising throughout the qualifying session as well as the race.
Although the race only involved eight laps, the event lasted over two hours due to issues with the kinks. Several accidents occurred causing the race to be stopped for a while. The yellow flag was waved as an order to slow down but all the racing cars came to an abrupt halt as racing laws forbade overtaking when this flag was waved. After all these issues were resolved, the Technical University of Munich team from Germany.
There are eight participating teams namely Fly Eagle (China and UAE), Humda Lab (Hungary), Code19 (USA), Constructor (Germany), Technical University of Munich (Germany), Kinetiz (Singapore and UAE), Polimove (Italy), and Unimore (Italy). They were given two weeks to train the self-driving system in Abu Dhabi. After the qualification stage, only four teams are selected for the final race.
The team was given the same Dallara EAV4 racing vehicle with the same 2 liter 550 horsepower engine. The only difference lies in the self-driving software that each team has to develop themselves.
Each vehicle is also equipped with seven Sony IMX728 cameras that provide a 360-degree view, four ZF ProWave radars, three Seyond Falcon Kinetic FK1 LIDARs and a Neousys RGS-8805GC computer with NVIDIA GPU.
A2RL's first race didn't go well but this was a maiden attempt. The development of AI is very fast and don't be surprised if within the last five years the A2RL self-driving system will be able to beat human drivers.