Formula E announces the world’s first driverless car racing championship

Formula E, the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) backed all-electric racing series, will run the world's first driverless racing series starting next season in late 2016 to 2017. The racing series organisers have partnered with a company called Kinetik to develop new technologies in autonomous electric racing cars.

The driverless racing series, dubbed as Roborace, is the third season of Formula E racing series. Formula E made its debut in Beijing last year as the first racing series exclusively for electric cars. The first season was started in September 2014 to early 2015 and the second season started in October this year and is scheduled to end in early July 2016.

Roborace will take place before each Formula E race in the same circuits in major cities across the world. According to Formula E Championship's official blog, the race will include ten teams, each with two driverless cars. The teams will compete in one hour race over the full championship season.

The racing teams in Roborace will use the same type of driverless cars. The driverless racing series will be a software rather than a hardware competition. The teams will compete using real-time algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Founder of Kinetik and Roborace Denis Sverdlov told Wired that he believes that in the future all of the world's vehicles will be assisted by AI and powered by electricity to improve the environment and the road safety.

Sverdlov said that the company expects the cars will have high acceleration and high speeds. He claimed the driverless cars in Roborace would have top speeds of more than 300 kilometers per hour (186 miles per hour). It means the autonomous cars will be faster than the Formula E electric cars which have top speeds of 140 miles per hour, according to The Verge.

The cars will also be the fastest autonomous cars in the world, beating up Audi's self-driving RS7 which has top speeds of 149 miles per hour.

Kinetik had already created the initial software that will power the driverless racing cars. Sverdlov mentioned that the company has created the first version of the APIs so the teams can use it to do their algorithms and use the simulations to see how it works.

All the companies that are working on AI and driverless technology developments have been invited to the competition. CEO of Formula E Alejandro Agag mentioned Google, Uber, Continental and Bosch as some of the companies he would like to see involved in Roborace championship.