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World’s First Driverless Race Car

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‘Driverless’ cars are being developed in every corner nowadays, but could we see the same concept applied to a Race Car?

Can a race car do without its driver? You’d think not, but a British company is aiming to prove otherwise with a new racing prototype.

It’s called the DevBot, and as its name suggests, it’s been built with the specific aim of allowing development on a race series of robotic, self-driving cars.

Roborace, the company behind the series, has created the DevBot as a prototype, in order to show what driverless racing cars can do. It plans to stage a series of races with the cars, which will take place as part of the 2016/17 Formula E Championship for manually driven electric cars.

The DevBot’s form is rather different to the finished cars’, as it incorporates a standardised, safety-compliant cabin in order that a person can ride aboard or even take control.

Roborace says this will enable engineers to gain a better understanding of the way the computers “think” as the car drives itself around a track.

The rest of the car is entirely custom-built, and features the same electric powertrain, sensors, computer “brains” and communication technology as the finished product, which is set to be revealed later this year.

Roborace says it has already undertaken secret trials of the DevBot on airfields and racing circuits around the country, during one of which the car drove itself around Silverstone’s International Circuit.

It adds that it has already received applications from “a large number of technology, motorsport, research laboratory and university teams” to take part in the series, all of whom will be given time with the car over the next six months before the race series commences.

Ten teams in total will be allowed to enter two cars each into the races, which will last one hour and take place just before each Formula E round, and on the same circuits – including the London round.

All the teams will use the same car with the same hardware beneath the skin, but the skill will be in the software engineering, as teams will be allowed to make changes to the complex programming installed in the car to try and improve its performance on the track.

Roborace says the aim of the series is to show off autonomous car technology, in order to improve their public perception, and to further the abilities of the technology through competition.

DevBot took part in its first public demonstration at the Formula E open practice sessions, which was held at Donington Park on August 24.

– Alex Robbins

Ford’s Self-Driving Car to arrive in 2021

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Ford has said it will mass-produce a fully autonomous self-driving car without a steering wheel by 2021.

The bold ambition was outlined by the Ford’s 27th president, Mark Fields, at an event in Palo Alto, California.

Ford said it would double its investment in its research centre in the city, as well as making sizable investments in technology companies in the autonomy industry.

The firm said the car would be in use by customers by 2021.

It said this was most likely as part of an Uber-like ride-sharing service – but one that doesn’t require a human driver.

“As you can imagine, the experience inside a vehicle where you don’t have to take control changes everything,” said Mr Fields, in an interview with the BBC.

“Whether you want to do work, whether you want entertainment… those are the types of things we are thinking about as we design the experience for this type of autonomous vehicle.”

The announcement, described as “transformational” by Mr Fields, signalled an era when Ford sees itself, particularly in cities, as a company that provides an ad-hoc service rather than focusing solely on selling the cars to the general public.

“There will be a growing per cent of the industry that will be fully autonomous vehicles,” Mr Fields said.

“Our goal is not only to be an auto company, but an auto and mobility company.”

 

 Level up

In recent years Ford has described itself as a technology company rather than simply a car maker, and on Tuesday it genuinely started to sound like one.

In partnership with Chinese firm Baidu, Ford has made a joint investment of $150m (£115m) in Velodyne – a company that works on light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology. LiDAR is the system used for accurately detecting objects around the car.

Ford was also part of an investment round that raised $6.6m for Civil Maps – a digital mapping company – as well as money put towards neuroscience research.

Tellingly, there was no mention of Google or Apple in Ford’s announcement – a suggestion it has opted to compete against the Silicon Valley giants rather than try and work with them as some had originally anticipated.

But Google still leads the way in self-driving technology – its cars have been out on public roads clocking up miles for several years now. It too is developing a car without a steering wheel – but regulations so far prevent that car from venturing beyond private land.

Like Google, Ford said it would be focusing on “Level 4” autonomy in reference to the standards put in place by the US-based Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).

The levels represent the sophistication of self-driving technology. At Level four – “high automation” – the car is able to operate, unmonitored, in a particular use case. For Ford, the use case would be a city area. Level 5 would mean full autonomy in any driving condition.

The company said it was not interested in offering Level two or three driving. Level two means some level of automation that requires the driver to monitor the car at all times.

 

 

Isolated Tesla

Tesla’s Autopilot, which changes lanes and monitors traffic flow, is officially Level two – although critics say human nature means drivers are instinctively treating Autopilot as if it were in fact Level three automation. Level three is when constant monitoring is not required, but drivers should be ready to take control in emergencies. Tesla’s technology is under investigation by US road safety regulators after it was blamed for causing the death of a driver earlier this year.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk defended the roll-out of Autopilot in a recent blog post:

“When used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability,” he wrote.

At its announcement, Ford chief technical officer Raj Nair said the company wasn’t satisfied that drivers could safely take control from a level two or three vehicle at a moment’s notice.

“We don’t yet know how to manage hand over back to the driver and have him engage and have him situationally aware, and be able to do that in a safe aware manner,” he said.

This approach chimes with the views of Google which in the past has expressed concern about the safety implications of semi-autonomous driving. It leaves Tesla, with Autopliot, isolated among auto makers.

“Tesla is unique in that it’s allowing its users to be beta testers,” said Wayne Cunningham, managing editor of motoring news website Road Show.

“No other company thinks that way.”

On Ford’s 2021 pledge, Mr Cunningham told the BBC it was a feasible goal but one that was intentionally narrow.

“It’s not as an aggressive step as it sounds,” he said.

“This is really a car designed for very specific urban environments. It’s a car that’s going to take people at 20-30 mph through city centres.”

 

– Dave Lee

SSC Bloodhound Development Back on Track

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SSC Bloodhound Development progress has resumed after pending for 10 months.

SSC Bloodhound development had been on hold in recent months because of a shortage of cash, but new sponsorship deals mean engineers can now resume their work.

October 2017 will mark the 20th anniversary of the current land speed record – 763mph (1,228km/h), which was set by Thrust SSC in the US desert.

Bloodhound intends to raise this to 800mph, running in South Africa.

The new sponsors are not immediately being identified, but their support puts the British project on a solid financial footing.

“We now have the most vision of forward-funding that we’ve ever had,” said components chief Conor La Grue.

“In the past, we’ve only ever really had funding to plan two to three months ahead.

“We’re now in a position to go all the way through to taking the record.”

Engineers that were let go during the hibernation are being brought back; outstanding components needed to fully finish the vehicle are being ordered.

The near-complete car was showcased at Canary Wharf in London last September.

Since then it has been sitting largely untouched at Bloodhound’s technical HQ in Bristol.

Now, it will be stripped down from its initial “dry build” and then reassembled, with fluids, ready to go racing.

A key task is to complete the development of the vehicle’s rocket system.

Bloodhound will be using a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine to get itself rolling and to reach speeds in the low hundreds (mph), but it will need a booster to take it through the sound barrier and on to 800mph.

The rocket itself is being sourced from the Nammo company in Norway, but it will use a Bloodhound-designed gearbox and pump driven by a Jaguar V8.

Testing of these elements all operating together will be conducted in the autumn.

The team intends to employ the rocket in a monopropellant configuration. This means no fuel grain is burned in the motor.

To produce thrust, concentrated hydrogen peroxide is merely pumped at pressure across a catalyst, where it decomposes into steam and oxygen. The hot gases are then directed out through a nozzle at high velocity.

It is the simplest way to use the rocket. Only if Bloodhound attempts to run faster than 1,000mph – something it still hopes to do in 2018 – will the Nammo technology need to burn a rubber propellant.

The new schedule calls for the race-ready car to be doing some trial runs at the Newquay aerohub in Cornwall in May or June of next year.

These runs will only get up to about 200mph but should be very instructive for the engineers, enabling them to check, for example, that all the software has every system working in unison.

“Fortunately, we don’t have the millions of lines of code that they had in the space shuttle,” said chief engineer Mark Chapman.

“We’re talking now about being in South Africa in August/September 2017. This would give us a few weeks of running to shake the car down, increase the speed and then go for the record around October.

“The date would be quite poignant because it would be exactly 20 years since Thrust SSC.”

Bloodhound is the direct descendant of Thrust. The project director (Richard Noble), the driver (Andy Green) and the aerodynamicist (Ron Ayers) have reprised their roles.

The big difference this time around is the supporting education programme.

Bloodhound was conceived as a way to enthuse young people into STEM subjects.

More than 5,000 schools have now taken part in learning programmes based on the science of land speed records.

– Jonathan Amos

Electric Car sets World Acceleration Record

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Student-built EV accelerated to 100kph in just over 1.51 seconds, stamping on previous 1.78 second EV world record

An electric racing car built by a group of students in Switzerland has broken the world record for fastest acceleration by a battery-powered vehicle.

The car, which was developed by students at ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, accelerated to 100 kph (62 mph) in 1.513 seconds, over a distance of less than 30m, on Wednesday. The previous world record, set last year by a team at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, stood at 1.779 seconds.

The record was set on a track on the Dubendorf air base near Zurich.

The Grimsel electric car was developed by a team of 30 student engineers from the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) who compete annually in the Formula Student competition, the largest competition worldwide for engineering students.

Built in less than a year, the EV weighs just 168 kg, thanks to extensive use of carbon-fibre materials. It is powered by four hub motors, while a traction control system allows individual control of each wheel, allowing the car’s acceleration to be increased even further.

“Grimsel is AMZ’s fifth electric vehicle and sets new standards in lightweight construction and electric drive technology,” ETH Zurich said in a release. “No large-scale production car – even one with a combustion engine – can reach an acceleration comparable to the Grimsel.”

– Jocelyn Timperley

Jaguar’s turn to Virtual Reality: Increased Car Sales

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Jaguar says VR is helping it sell an ‘incredible amount of cars’ as it launches Andy Murray experience

Having signed up Andy Murray for a new virtual reality experience, Jaguar has insisted the technology isn’t a gimmick and is resulting in improved car sales.

The #FeelWimbledon VR campaign is part of Jaguar’s sponsorship of the iconic tennis tournament and places users onto Centre Court to experience the atmosphere while hitting the winning shot as Andy Murray.

The virtual reality experience will debut at Goodwood Festival of Speed before being placed at London Waterloo station for the duration of the tournament. It will also be distributed throughout Jaguar’s car dealerships via 20,000 Google Cardboards.

With virtual reality (VR) set to become a $1bn (£710m) industry by the end of 2016, marketers are seeking to tap into the platform’s storytelling power to set the agenda for VR excellence.

Jaguar Land Rover, in particular, first launched a VR experience (in partnership with IBM) back in September 2014. The VR experience allows an in-store consumer who is wearing a headset to choose the model, make, colour and features of a car. The experience also allows consumers to get into the car to check out interior features with a 360-degree view, and to make real-time changes.

And Robert Herd, head of communications at Jaguar Land Rover UK, said VR is having a major impact on the brand.

“We felt there was a perfect opportunity to build something cutting edge for Wimbledon and we want the public to experience hitting the winning smash and how that feeling of joy has similarities to driving one of our cars,” he told Marketing Week.

“Jaguar now designs its cars in a VR environment and sells its cars in a VR environment; it is incredibly successful for driving purchases.

“Yes, initially consumers think it is gimmick but they quickly convert and it is driving a lot of additional car sales for us.”

Robert Herd, head of communications at Jaguar Land Rover UK

Herd said there is now a “lack of fear” among consumers to try VR experiences – with Jaguar having previewed models including the F Type, F Face and Discovery Sport through the technology – and that the car brand will continue to “evolve” its role within the retail experience.

Standing out at Wimbledon

In a recent interview, Alexandra Willis, head of comms, content and digital at the All English Lawn Tennis Club, advised sponsors: “Fans are so discerning now they can spot immediately if someone is trying to pigeon hole themselves into speaking in a millennial way. You have to be authentic to your brand and its ties to Wimbledon. Don’t just do Facebook Live as everyone else is.”

Yet, despite the warning, Jaguar’s Herd is confident it can stand out.

The luxury car brand will launch a series of films celebrating the ‘four emotions of Jaguar’ to fit around the tournament and has also created reactive videos so its activity can change based around the event. The latter will include a film that shows the Jaguar F-Pace roof opening and closing should it rain during play and the roof is required to close on Centre Court.

Herd says the key to sponsor success at Wimbledon is being reactive and brands that just sit back after creating an above the line campaign will do more damage than good.

He concluded: “We can change our messaging or video campaigns based on the results. As a sponsor, you’ll fail if your campaign can’t adapt in real-time.”

– Thomas Hobbs

360° Camera Video of Stig on Top Gear Test Track

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360° Camera allows you to take a ride around Top Gear’s test track with the Stig

Ever wondered what it’s like to be sat in a high performance car whilst being raced around one of Britain’s most famous race circuits?

Thanks to 360° Technology, you can now take a seat in the new Ariel Nomad whilst Top Gear’s Stig races around Dunsfold Circuit at high speed. Check out the video below.

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