Autonomous racing car adapts speed for safer faster lap times
Mission Performance: Automatic and Adaptive Race Pace Progression for Autonomous Racing
RoboticsSoftware Engineering
Summary
Driving an autonomous race car fast and safely is tricky because the car’s tires change grip as they heat up. The authors describe a system that helps the car start slow to warm the tires and then gradually speed up while constantly checking safety and car behavior in each section of the track. Instead of guessing how the tires grip the road, the system directly adjusts how fast the car tries to go. They tested this on a real autonomous race car during a professional racing event to show it works well.
What this means in practice
- •For autonomous vehicle engineers: Implement adaptive speed strategies that optimize lap times while maintaining safety based on real-time vehicle dynamics during a race.
- •For motorsport team operators: Use the adaptive mission performance module to improve autonomous race car performance progressively over a race without compromising safety.
Authors
Giovanni Lambertini, Matteo Pini, Nicola Musiu, Ayoub Raji, Francesco Iacovacci, Marko Bertogna
Abstract
In this paper, we describe the Mission Performance module implemented for a fully autonomous racing car to automatically manage the longitudinal, lateral, and combined performances, aiming to speedup the laptime progression while assuring safety. Motivated by the difficulty and risks of applying the real-time estimation of the grip to critical modules like the motion planner and controller, the Mission Performance guides these modules adapting their target performance instead of changing the vehicle model parameters. The module is formed by pre-defined progressions to warm up the tires at the beginning of a run. Then, the system continuously monitors safety and vehicle dynamics metrics on a per-sector basis to adaptively reduce, maintain, or increase the performance levels for each sector, progressively converging toward the maximum allowed value. The solution's effectiveness is demonstrated on the EAV-25, a fully autonomous Dallara Superformula, at the Yas Marina Circuit during the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) Season 2.