Daniil Kvyat: We witnessed a historical event

Yesterday in Abu Dhabi took place an event that was important in its own way, although the world of motorsport is probably only fully aware of its significance from a certain perspective, but not far away.

We are talking about the very first race of an unusual series, the full name of which is: Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League. Abbreviated as A2RL – last year we talked about this new phenomenon, i.e. driverless driving. But at the time this series was just being established, and just a few months later the first stage was already held on the Yas Marina circuit.

As The Race writes, everything here is real: single-seater cars produced by Dallara – the kind used in the Japanese Super Formula series, quite powerful engines, eight participating teams and a very significant cash prize. There are only racers. Instead, machines are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI).

However, there is one more racer, and you know him: this is Daniil Kvyat. We also wrote that he is working on the unmanned series, and now we can add some new information.

All eight teams have the same cars: last year’s Dallara chassis is equipped with 4-cylinder turbo engines with a displacement of 2 liters, developing around 550 hp. Torque is transmitted to the drive wheels via a transmission that integrates a six-speed gearbox. Brakes are supplied by Brembo and tires by Yokohama.

But the cockpit equipment of these cars is completely special: via a system of ‘sensory organs’ consisting of seven video cameras, four radars and three lidars, the on-board computer receives information about what is happening around the car, analyzes it and accepts certain information in a fraction of a second. solutions. Of course, this is just the most general information about how everything works in such technology.

The main thing that distinguishes the cars of different teams is the software settings, and here each team must show all its programming skills. Just like in any other racing discipline, these specialists have a very specific task: their car must cover the race distance the fastest. But for this, the technology, which is based on AI capabilities, must be trained in a special way.

Let’s list the participants of the series, all eight A2RL teams: Fly Eagle (China and UAE), Humda Lab (Hungary), Code19 (USA), Constructor (Germany), Kinetiz (Singapore and UAE), Polimove (Italy) , Unimore (Italy), as well as a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The prize money is $2.25 million, and the lion’s share goes to the strongest team.

As you might guess, the aim of the series is not only to demonstrate the capabilities of AI and its achievements in this field, but also to train highly qualified IT specialists capable of solving such specific problems.

The teams landed in Abu Dhabi and started training two weeks before the race. There were some incidents: in one case a car crashed into barriers, in the other case two cars collided on the highway.

When practice was over, all teams qualified, but only the top four were allowed to start Saturday’s race. They were Polimove (it was the first time seen), Unimore (2nd result), TUM (3rd) and Constructor (4th).

And now it’s time to give the floor to Daniil Kvyat, a former Russian Formula 1 driver who now competes for the Lamborghini factory team in the WEC. For Saturday’s race, he took his place in the cockpit of a ‘normal’ Super Formula car to take part in the human AI competition.

In reality, however, it was not a real race, more of a demonstration race. Of course, Daniil easily surpassed the self-driving car, after which he noted: “Today we witnessed some kind of historical event, and it is very cool to take part in it. Until recently, it was difficult to imagine that such a thing was possible: machines controlled by artificial intelligence.

And now they are performing their task well, which promises very good prospects. All this is very interesting for all engineers, all technical specialists involved in this project.”

The format of the final race is as follows: two formation laps, after which a running start is given, followed by six more laps at fighting pace. However, three of them had to be carried out behind the safety car, as various types of abnormal events occurred on the circuit, mainly related to technical faults. Ultimately, the victory went to the TUM team.

On the one hand, we must admit that the first race did not go as well as the organizers would have liked, on the other hand, this is just the beginning, and experts who watched the events on the Yas Marina circuit believe that they clearly indicate progress. And shortcomings and problems will be gradually eliminated.

The development in the field of AI is going very fast, it is one of the most promising industries on a global scale, and the great A2RL racing series will contribute to this development. So far, series organizers promise to hold at least one race a year, and the prize fund is intended to last four years. You can expect that the next time self-driving race cars take to the track, the race will run much smoother.