Tearing it up autonomously.
Technology is advancing at an incredible pace today. Things that once seemed like science fiction are becoming a reality. One of those technologies are autonomous vehicles, aka self-driving cars. While it’s still in the experimental phase for the most part, this miniature rally car developed by Georgia Tech is digging it’s off road wheels and tires into the dirt and driving itself!
Rally racing is one of the toughest and most demanding forms of racing. Drivers dig their off road wheels and tires into dirt, ice, snow, water, rocks, gravel, and everything else in between through sharp turns, thin roads, and jumps in an effort to complete a stage as fast as possible.
Rally racing takes a toll mentally, which is why a good co-driver is so important. These miniature one-fifth scale rally cars and their small off road wheels and tires do all of that – without a driver.
Georgia Tech’s students and staff have developed a miniature rally car packed with computers and sensors that can analyze the road ahead and react accordingly thanks to advanced algorithms. These algorithms tell the vehicle how to drive and reach based on the information from its sensors of the road ahead and under it’s off road wheels and tires. In essence it can drive itself in the fastest way around a track or course according to its calculations.
It’s amazing how far technology has come. We just hope that this never replaces actual human drivers in racing!
Source: Georgia Tech
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