A lot of things have happened in the 12 months since Roborace first brought its all-autonomous robocar to the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Back then, the Tron-like racer was to be used in an all-electric, fully-autonomous series that would support the Formula E World Championship. However, such a series has yet to see the light of day following a change of direction announced by the company last year and shown at Goodwood this weekend.
Also Read: Roborace Will Go Up THAT Hill With Autonomous DevBot 2.0
Rather than taking humans completely out of the equation, Roborace has decided that, when its championship launches, drivers will pilot the vehicles for the first half of each race before the self-driving systems take over for the second half. This new direction was previewed at Goodwood with the eye-catching DevBot 2.0 racer.
During the first section of the hillclimb, there was a human driver behind the wheel of the prototype-inspired racer. Before long, he stepped out at the start of the hillclimb’s main ‘straight’ and waved goodbye to the car as it drove itself up the rest of the course. As promised, the racer drove itself up the hillclimb in reasonable pace and no problem whatsoever.
The DevBot 2.0 can drive itself using a GPS-based system, LiDAR, or a combination of the two. On a wide-open track, the GPS is more than enough – however, at the Goodwood hillclimb, where trees often block the satellites’ signal, it was running on LiDAR instead.