Driverless race cars dodge stray dog in Argentina—but one wipes out into a wall

Roborace

In just its third season, Formula E deserves credit for trying out new ideas in motorsport. Not everything has been a success, but the risk of trying to innovate in broad daylight is that people will see your mistakes as they happen. Take Roborace for example. The idea is to create a series of support races for Formula E where each team uses an identical driverless car, competing to write the best-racing AI. That driverless race car isn't quite ready yet, but Roborace took a pair of DevBots to Argentina this weekend for a demonstration at the Buenos Aires ePrix.

It may not have been the demonstration that Roborace hoped for. One of the DevBots—the yellow one—ran out of talent and clipped a wall. But that happens to rookie human drivers, too, and at least in this case there was no chance of a rookie seriously hurting themselves. Some argue that this is bad news for Roborace and self-driving cars, but this is racing. If it were easy to get right, it wouldn't be any fun.

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