German team wins Abu Dhabi driverless motor racing event with safety at heart

One of the goals of a league for self-driving car races in Abu Dhabi is road safety, organiser Tom McCarthy said.

On Saturday, teams from around the world competed in the UAE’s first driverless challenge. Autonomous cars took to the Yas Marina Circuit, a track that is better known for Formula One stars such as Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.

There was a much bigger prize at stake than track glory for the team behind the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL).

“Why we are doing it is because we want to put a big focus on road accidents,” said Mr McCarthy, who is the executive director of Aspire, organiser of the A2RL race and the programme management and business development arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council.

“More than one million people are killed each year on the roads globally. It’s a number that remains stubbornly high.

“What we find is the focus from the car manufacturers is on what happens after the accident, or what they call secondary or reactive safety.

“But how about trying to stop the accident occurring?”

Mr McCarthy suggested that data collected from self-driving cars would help to avoid accidents.

“We are trying to first of all test these technologies in extreme conditions and also bring along the public to show them what’s happening,” he told The National.

“We want to have a situation where, 10 years from now, the number of fatalities has greatly gone down and that we have made a small contribution to that.”

Teams of coders and engineers from the UAE, Germany, Italy, Singapore, the US, Hungary and China competed for a total of $2.25 million in prizes on Saturday.

All teams operate a Dallara Super Formula SF23, built by racing car manufacturer Dallara. They use self-driving technology designed for A2RL.

The car’s top speed is 240kph, said Mr McCarthy.

It was the crew from the Technical University of Munich from Germany who claimed victory on Saturday, one of eight teams that vied for the top spot over two days.

Last July, the UAE Cabinet approved the first preliminary national licence for self-driving cars, and a few months before that, five electric cars mapped out roads across Dubai for the eventual unveiling of autonomous public transport.

“This is one of the frontiers, besides the fact that we are developing the concept of safety using autonomous solutions,” said Stephane Timpano, chief executive of Aspire. “We are just scratching the surface of AI sport right now.

“One of the ambitions is for us [in Abu Dhabi] to become a point of reference when it comes to autonomous sport.”

One challenge autonomous racing faces is a public who have doubts about the sport, he said.

“People are sceptical because they don’t see the driver, they don’t see the rock star, if you will,” said Mr Timpano.

“But we’re going to put on amazing shows. It’s only going to get better and better as the technology advances.”