Perhaps you recall the Roborace, a new racing event set to feature futuristic–looking electric vehicles (that completely lack seats or humans in the cockpit). We were quite impressed by these electric racer’s visual design but we haven’t actually seen them in motion. With the reveal of DevBot, we finally have. Sort of.
DevBot is, based on its looks right now, what you get if you have a vehicle that is part-car, part-robot. There’s space for a human driver in this test vehicle but most of the car’s inner workings are exposed. That’s because the DevBot is being used to fine-tune the default hardware and software that Roborace teams will be starting the 2016/2017 Formula E season out with.
DevBot is apparently completely custom made, aside from the cabin area. Though the team behind the test vehicle haven’t said as much, it should be rocking the Nvidia Drive PX 2 supercomputer, GPS, as well as lidar and radar sensors. There’s a chance that the hardware setup will change over time, as this experimental race series may work better with different sensor configurations. The software driving all of this will certainly morph over time.
If you want to catch a few glimpses of the DevBot in action then hit up the video below. We don’t see it making a full lap but it’s in motion. Slowly, but without a driver. That’s more than we’ve seen so far, so we’ll take it.
Source: Roborace
