Hello again and welcome to another Life In 360° themed around motor racing. It wasn’t that long ago that we’d last taken to the tarmac, as we have done in Li360 on more than a few occasions. In fact, we looked once again at Formula 1’s selection of coverage from across the most recent races a few weeks back.
My intention was not, therefor, to go back to the motorsport well for a little while, at least.
However…
At the end of last month we featured a story about the world-famous Goodwood Festival of Speed and, as part of the event people were able to take part in an HTC Vive experience that showcased the view from Roborace’s Robocar – the first fully autonomous, fully driverless vehicle to participate in the event. Doing so with a combination of ultrasonic, GPS, and camera sensors as well as both LiDAR and standard radar.
Robocar captured the footage of the run then it was put into a simulator, that (utilising an HTC Vive Pro) allowed attendees to feel as if they were driving the car on the exact run they’d seen done at the event.
Well, it turns out that Roborace also released the footage as a standard 360 degree video, so we’ve included it as today’s Li360 entry.
“We are ecstatic that the team has been able to achieve this landmark run and we hope that it draws attention to the amazing advances that are being made in the automotive industry.” Explained Deputy CEO of Roborace, Rod Chong at the time. “Robocar is an ambassador for the future technologies we will see on our roads and we hope that inspirational stunts like this will change public perceptions of autonomous vehicles.”
“It is an enormous achievement for a race car to complete the very first run of the Hill using only artificial intelligence,” Added the Duke of Richmond, Charles Gordon-Lennox – the Festival of Speed’s Founder. “Roborace has worked incredibly hard in order to pull this off.”
You can see a behind the scenes video here and the 360 degree video below. We’ll have more Li360 next week, here on VRFocus.
