ROBORACE: Racing, Now Without Drivers!

For the longest time, racing was a discipline where every competitor had to push his or her limits; whether racers were mounting horses, riding in carts or in the earliest automobiles, they had to not only give everything they had, but also understand the limits of their vehicle and work around those thresholds.

Formula E, which opened its first season last year and enabled racers to drive on closed road circuits using electric single-seater cars, just announced a new series that will throw all this away: ROBORACE will not feature any driver, only autonomous vehicles.

ROBORACE will be held before the start of each Formula E race. Ten teams will each field two cars, which will all be identical, although teams will be able to tweak their autonomous software programming.

This initiative is particularly interesting for manufacturers that are working on autonomous vehicles, since they can use this opportunity to test some of their software in a highly-competitive environment.

And if you are worried that ROBORACE will be boring, rest assured: Formula E's CEO wants teams to have distinct personalities, and each car will have to have a name.