Autonomous racing cars also crash

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The Verge:

The world’s first self-driving robot racing series took a big step toward reality this weekend. For the first time ever, both of Roborace’s prototype autonomous racecars ran against each other on a track.

And:

The two Roborace prototypes — which the company refers to as DevBots — “battled” each other around the same Puerto Madero street circuit in Buenos Aires that hosted the third race of Formula E’s third season. The cars’ Nvidia-powered brains handled 20 autonomous laps across the race weekend, according to Roborace, and topped out at about 115 miles per hour.

115 mph (185 km/h) is pretty slow for race cars, but fast enough to enjoy. At Monza last year (the Italian Grand Prix), the top speed was 225 mph (360 km/h). Once the bugs are all worked out, I expect we’ll see autonomous cars hit those speeds and, since the AI drivers will not have those pesky human flaws, even pass those speeds.

One of the two DevBots successfully dodged a dog who wandered onto the track, while the other eventually smacked the wall in one of the turns — a “racing incident” that was the result of a “pushing the boundaries of AI,” according to Roborace.

Wait. A dog got on the track? Is that real? Yup: