Despite years of work, the fully-autonomous race
cars from Roborace are still yet to hit the track competitively in a series
running alongside Formula E. Now, Roborace has announced a series of changes to
the project and set its sights on launching the new racing series next year.
Rather than using the futuristic Robocar revealed
last year, the company, led by 2016/2017 Formula E champion Lucas di Grassi,
will kick off its inaugural season with a vehicle dubbed DevBot 2.0, a
second-generation version of its autonomous development car.
DevBot 2.0 takes design inspiration from LMP race
cars and unlike the Robocar, actually has a cockpit. As a result, the vehicles
will be piloted for the first half of each race by a human driver while for the
second half of the race, the self-driving systems will take over.
Compared to the original DevBot tester which has
been in the works for quite some time, DevBot 2.0 has a more complete and
eye-catching design, complete with a huge rear wing and LED lighting. The first season is expected to
feature fewer than 10 cars and according to di Grassi, “six or seven” new
DevBot 2.0s are currently being built. Two teams have already signed up for the
inaugural season.
Over the coming years, Roborace expects the series
to develop drastically. For the category’s full release in 2021, racers will be
competing in new vehicles that bring together the best elements of DevBot 2.0
and the cockpit-less Robocar. Di Grassi says he would like the final cars to
deliver in excess of 1341 hp, use four electric motors, and to have the ability
to control the power for each wheel.
