The first race of the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) was held at the Yas Marina Abu Dhabi Circuit Grand Prix Formula 1 this past weekend. The AI racing series, called A2RL, made its long-awaited debut with eight SF19 single-seaters driven by Dallara robots. Self-driving cars demonstrated and competed against each other. Separately, the autonomous AI cars also raced a car driven by F1 driver Daniil Kvyat. The contested battle between robot and human ended with a difference of 10.38 seconds in favor of humanity.
Several incidents during the fourth lap out of a total of eight predicted heated the passions of spectators and commentators. The race-leading Polimove AI car locked its tires and spun. The Unimore vehicle that was closely following her managed to avoid the impact and stopped after passing the scene of the accident. The remaining robotic racers also stalled due to confusion in their set safety parameters in “yellow flag” conditions.
This has given skeptics reason to cheer and chant that artificial intelligence will have no advantage over the human mind. There were also comments from the other pole. “Watch the race in a year or a year and a half. I'm not sure it will be the same,” said Dr Giovanni Pau, technical director at the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Robotics Research Centre.
"When the two drones collided, the others got confused, they are robots after all. But this will obviously change very quickly, unfortunately or not", comments Maria Misaleva, who provided our team with the video and photos from the event site in Abu Dhabi.
10,000 spectators were at the Yas Marina Circuit to watch the race. 600,000 speed fans followed the events online. They also witnessed another grand debut of a flying taxi that will cover the distance between Abu Dhabi and Dubai in 30 minutes.