Just how smart is an autonomous race car?

[SOUND] [LAUGH] [SOUND] Pretty sure that's not how that was supposed to go. [MUSIC] We've come to Silverstone here in the UK to find out a bit more about Robo. Startup championship that aims to be the first racing series to feature electric autonomous driverless cars. [SOUND] Sacrilege I hear you say, and I kind of agree but before you reach for your pitch for, just hear me out, I'm pretty sure I can start on something that we could all agree on. This is a stunning race. And if it reminds you of a prototype, it's because it is based on a genetic LNP dream car, obviously 78 it's got two motors driving the rear wheels putting out a combined 270 kilowatts of power, or 360 brake horsepower in old money 440 newton meters of torque, although it may not sound like a lot, remember this is instant talk. You know that your typical electric car is intelligent. It is an absolute featherweight as well weighing in at 1135 kilograms. That is coincidentally one kilogram lighter than the 40 S I drove here today. It's slim figure and it's instant power delivery then mean that nought to 60 happens within a three second window, top speed. I hear 150 miles an hour. We are gonna be limited today. So I don't think we'll be breaking any records. But we will get to drive out there. We don't have a lot of time so I'm going to pass it over to voice over George give you a few more specs while I get ready. The clue is in the name really development robots. Unlike Robocar it's strictly autonomous brother which we won't cover on this video Allows for a driver to take the controls at least during an initial phase while the car maps out the circuit using a bunch of cool gadgets like AI, cameras, LIDAR, military grade GPS, you name it. But the goal being that both driver and car could ultimately learn from each other. As racing drivers, we spend half our lives analysing data and the concept of using technology to achieve the best lap time possible. Is really just part in parcel. So this could bring an interesting whole new dimension to that process and I was curious to try it out for myself. Okay, so we're gonna start from pull. [LAUGH] Well you'll know is a drag, but still feels good. I'm gonna wait for the countdown from the engineers on the radio, and then we're gonna head for a quick lunch. [BLANK_AUDIO] Let's go, [UNKNOWN]. [BLANK_AUDIO] [UNKNOWN] Well, it's a shame as I've actually been lucky enough to get a handful of laps in the genetic that this car is based on so it would have been great to see how it stacks up rather than taking every corner flat at 60 miles an hour.>> I'm pretty certain this will be flat, in fact I'm not too worried. If it's not [INAUDIBLE] One of the engineers actually confessed to me earlier that they secretly rejoice when there's a crashes and that provides them with invaluable data. So I'm not too worried if I read it. Yeah. Roborace actually held their first ever race early this year and by all accounts, it was a success. Granted, it was a race between only two cars and the current second place had to ask for permission to overtake. And the whole thing happened at less than breakneck speed, shall we say, but it's still mighty impressive when you consider this is all done autonomous lead by the AI. Speaking of which, there we go cross the line. I'm going to stop in the same spot center. It's time to let the AI take over. [BLANK AUDIO] I can confirm the blue light is flashing. [BLANK AUDIO] Whoa! [LAUGH] [SOUND] Well that didn't go so well. [LAUGH] All right guys, I don't know if you saw that. Back on land the engineers were confident they could quickly fix the issue remotely and I was told to hold, so hold I did. Group of islands? Seven across. [BLANK_AUDIO] Archipelago [BLANK_AUDIO] Eventually though, it was decided I should drive myself back to the pit. So earlier, the guys are talking about how these cars could potentially eventually develop their own personalities, their own individual personalities, and I think this one's already decided that it doesn't like me so. Luckily a spare car was on hand. So while that was being prepped, I took the chance to ask the roborace crew some hard hitting questions. So Tim as a fellow hat where I wanted to propose that we remove our hats and put on our tinfoil hats for a second, I want to address some Theories that are found online some concerns some of the viewers have I want your hot takes I wanted to just reply with a likely or not likely we can discuss it after but the first one is, well that's it that's loosen the boys out of a job.>> Not likely.>>It's all fun and games until you turn up to the garriage and your car is not there because it became self aware and decided it doesn't want to race today Not likely. Great. Looking forward to developing a friendship with my sent in car that will eventually develop into me falling in love with it and inevitably end up with me getting my heart broken as usual. Likely. I thought that was quite likely as well. These guys are playing with fire. It's only a matter of time before autonimous vehicles evolve and become intelligent enough to overpower humans. And in no time, as a way of making us pay for over a century of enslavement, they will force us to give them piggybacks everywhere they wanna go. Man. That sounds really likely to me. We've got the world's fastest autonomous robot here. Mm-hm. This is quite key, I'd say, robot or not, a car that you can get into So with a robot as Boston Dynamics are doing, as we are doing, you can put them through their paces in a whole myriad of environments, right. And it's the same with gaming. We wanna open a new type of sport. We don't wanna change motor sport. We can help Focus sport, but it's not the sole focus. It's not to replace a driver. It's to create a brand new sport and some of the ways that we're doing that is this to you know, meld the gaming world with with the most [UNKNOWN]. So, you know AR VR live Objects into the same scene, so, you can interact with it if you saw at home you can place objects or you can have the car violent against an actual bike or a sim racer a whole world opens up And these cars can sometimes defy physics, so we can put them through loop de loops and have races upside down in tunnels. I mean, these are all sort of creative concepts that we're actually storyboarding, the creative side of what we're doing at Roborace. Is is what can we develop from the creative that we that we visit. So the creative and entertainment aspects of it is going to lead. Yeah. the development will follow. follow. In a sense, and that sounds mad but the YouTube comments is that the creatives that are out there. They become the voice of what we do with Road Wars. And hope today we have season out through, and we have a test prepared and sort of a support series, etc. We gone through those places, involved in Universities. But we see the future together. Entertainment, pure entertainment. Where you'll sit at home and you're interacting with a car, making it move In the real place and objects in the real, playing fortnight, and not environment at the same time, it's all a possibility and that's what makes it pretty cool.>> It all sounded pretty cool So with my heart full of forgiveness and determined to give Deathbot a second chance, I went out again to line back up on the grid. [MUSIC] All right, here we go. One, two [SOUND] straight away [INAUDIBLE] [SOUND] much much, much better start [SOUND] We are still on track which is little far from [UNKNOWN] We will forgive that [UNKNOWN] to make it up for so, so good Again right racing lines. So there about. And I want to see where it's gonna break here. We're gonna see how late, it will actually break. That's not bad, fair enough, not too bad. Much better experience, I certainly feel a lot safer at least. So safe in fact that I decided to test the one true perk of autonomous driving, the ability to multi task. Penguins, it's kind of got trailblazing down to a T to be honest. [BLANK_AUDIO] Sometimes it takes ages to teach it you want to get that right. Yeah, there we go close to close enough to the line there in the exits. And this concludes our Lap of Silverstone. [BLANK_AUDIO] Cool. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, cool. [MUSIC] Here's how I see it, as a platform to develop autonomous driving technology that will then be passed down to road cars, this could be fantastic. Every time we speak to someone about Cars that drive themselves. Someone always comes up with some version of the trolley problem, which is to say for example, if another car was to pull out in front of yours, what would yours do? Would it veer off into the curb and risk running over a little pedestrians? Would it intentionally crash risking your life to save theirs? It's a complicated question and it's a valid one. So I think why not? Check 10 of these on a racetrack, couple of them get tangled going into a corner. What will the other ones do? It can be a fantastic way to see how the AI thinks and how the algorithm learns in an accelerated way. So whilst that might not be the most exciting form of motorsport to watch, I think you could still be great for motorsport because if you think F1 has been at the helm of technology forever, it's got this responsibility to keep moving it forward. So if another championship for example, Roborace, was to come in and take over that burden, maybe F1 could go back to being just about pure racing as we like it. And I know for a fact that I'm not gonna stop racing just because we domesticated horses 6000 years ago. We haven't stopped going for strolls. So I know I'm not going to stop racing. And maybe in a world where people don't need to drive, f1 drivers in racing. Drivers in general will just be seen as gladiators, like they used to be in the 20s in the 30s. So I think this could be great. Was I blown away by anything I experienced here today? I can't lie. I'm not gonna say I was. But I know technology moves exponentially. So I salute the engineers and all the people behind this project. I just hope they can deliver on all the visions they have for this endeavor. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out. Just don't ever limit me to 60 miles an hour again.