IAC and Roborace: 1 week, 2 events

Last week was very intense for the ARG team. With the 2nd IAC Hackathon and Roborace Season Beta event 1, the team was more than busy.

The week started with the IAC Hackathon, the first competitive step of the Indy Autonomous Challenge.

The challenges:

  • Find the optimum race line and achieve the fastest lap round
  • Dabble in the boundary of disaster and avoid an evasive maneuver during overtaking

The successful completion of these challenges brought ARG one step closer to the final race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in October 2021. Indianapolis, here we come!

However, there was not much time to celebrate as parallel by completing the Hackathon, Roborace Season Beta went into its first round: with the race car, the Devbot 2.0, at the Anglesey Circuit in Wales and the ARG team participating remotely from Graz.

Unfortunately, it did not go as planned. Bad weather conditions already reduced the track testing time for the teams. When finally, the ARG team, as first of all teams, started the race, the Devbot 2.0 performed an emergency stop in the very first corner.

What happened?

The car received a message from race control to perform an emergency stop, and of course, the Devbot 2.0 followed the request.

But who initiated this message?

No one!

It was a phantom message that should have never been sent to the car—the consequence: cancellation of the whole event.

For the sake of safety, we fully support the decision of Roborace to cancel the race. As Season Beta is a developing season, such incidents have to be expected. The ARG team is confident to learn a lot from this failure and will be back for the next race even stronger.

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