Could The Autonomous 'Roborace' Car Be Made To Drive Like Senna?

The concept of Roborace has been met with both intrigue and skepticism. On the one hand, you can’t help but wonder what would happen if you unleashed a bunch of autonomous racing cars onto a track. On the other, is there any point in racing if you take away the drivers?

But here’s the thing, there will - in a way - be drivers, and ‘they’ will be the differentiating factor between the cars. The idea is that Roborace will supply an identical vehicle to each team, and it’s up to them to sort the software which determines how it’ll drive. Or even who it’ll drive like.

Speaking to Topgear.com, Bryn Balcombe - chief strategy officer at Roboracer - said: “We’ve been asked if those old F1 names can come back into the sport…Like, ‘can you have Ayrton Senna come back and drive one of the Robocars, and then compete against Lewis Hamilton’.”

Balcombe wouldn’t say for sure if this will happen, but the possibilities for the coding are extensive. Presumably you could even programme a Robocar to drive like Pastor Maldonado or Romain Grosjean, if you’re happy with the increase in parts expenditure.

What’s perhaps more likely is that there will be “AI driver development programmes” to tweak the race craft of each virtual pilot. Eventually, the AI driver could take on a driving personality of its own, rather than borrowing from the skill set of a legend from the past.

Robocar designer Daniel Simon even proposes the idea of a future 24 Hours of Le Mans race where each car is driven by one person. They’d drive as long as they could, and then an AI recreation could do the rest, mimicking the fleshy driver’s style as best as it could.

As for when we’ll see these AI drivers battling it out, we can’t be sure. The series was first announced in 2015, but since then we’ve only seen a smattering of public test outings, including the running of the LMP3-based ‘DevBot’ (below) at some Formula E races last year. At the Goodwood Festival of Speed last weekend meanwhile, the real deal successfully navigated the famous hill climb (the same can’t be said for the Siemens Mustang), although it was limited to a top speed of 75mph.

Does the idea of autonomous cars mimicking legends make you more interested in Roborace? Does it make you more worried about a Skynet-style robot uprising? Whatever your views/level of paranoia, let us know in the comments…