Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/18/watch-an-autonomous-race-car-n.html
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Get back to me when autonomous demolition derby is a thing.
Meanwhile, thinking about self-driving cars gone mad brings to mind Roger Zelazny’s short story “Auto-Da-Fé”:
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I think it needs a better sound designer.
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Yeah, my vacuum cleaner sounds more exciting than that thing. Real race cars are supposed to sound kinda like this:
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It… doesn’t seem very fast. I’m not sure how much of that is my perception, and how much is that it’s slow as hell compared to a human driver.
Oh, it’s already a thing. Now, deliberate demolition derby is another thing altogether.
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Oh man, that’s beautiful. That shift at :48 was music to my ears.
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Although Goodwood is called “The Festival of Speed”, it is more a festival of things that look and sound beautiful and CAN go fast. There is a speed limit on the twisty, turny track; after all, a lot of the cars they take for a little run cost in the region of six figures a pop. I guess that the Robocar might have been slowed down to a safe speed in case anything went awry.
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Do they have a little Sarah Connor running around the track like they do with a rabbit for greyhounds?
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It seems to be wobbling side-to-side on the straightaways. I wonder if that’s the natural “gait” at that speed on that particular road, or if it’s constantly overcorrecting trying to drive a straight line.
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I remember that one! I’ve got it in a printed collection around here somewhere.
Anybody remember a short story about a father whose teenage son was killed on the highway by a heavily armed road bandit, so Dad hops in his own machine-gun-packed V8 to get revenge? It was this weird and wonderful combination of Mad Max and '50s Americana car culture. Like, it’s a crucial milestone in every boy’s life when he gets his first car and picks out its armaments under the approving eye of his sweater-vested patriarch.
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Its the whiny straight cut gears isn’t it… I mean no one would actually race a car like that.
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Is it cool, only kind of. I mean once you watch group B in car footage or modern hill climb this thing looks about as good as I could do in a street car.
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Constant overcorrecting, I’ll wager, and it doesn’t make much for a racing line.
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Safe enough on a Track with no passengers.
But less so in the real life version being lobbied for.
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“Why Johnny Can’t Speed”
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That’s the one! Thanks!
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I wonder if it learns the course as it goes along, so that, on a circuit, it would get faster with each lap?
I guess that fact that that looks unexciting is a selling point regarding self driving cars on the open road.
This one looks quite speedy.
Where they say about teaching the car to drive the circuit like a human, reminded me of a pilotless fighter plane project, where the AI was allowed to find a flying style of its own. The most optimal style proved to be flying in a permanent cockscrew. This would have kiled a human pilot, but allowed the pilotless plane to, very quickly, break in any direction. Of course, that kind of behaviour wouldn’t be too popular with any passengers.
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I can almost get over it sounding like shit, since electric is the future; it just makes so much more sense…
But no driver in a race car? What’s the fucking point? Aside from being an exercise of dubious utility in improving car autonomy, it just defeats the bloody purpose.
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