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August 02, 2004
Artificial Driving Intelligence
I've often wondered if you had a team of crack programmers, AI specialists and physics gurus if it would be possible for a computer to beat a human driver on a race track. Sure you'd need to put a load of sensors on the car to get as much "seat of the pants" into the computer as possible. Certainly, a computer would be able to reproduce activities such as breaking points more accurately.
I think it would be great to have a version of the Grand Challenge on a more restricted playing field. Pick a dedicated race course, put beacons on each turn apex and on the track shoulders, get a fleet of cars with identical performance and see who can add sensors, write code and get the fastest lap.
In the meantime, there are two open source projects focused on optimizing driving AI via race simulations. TORCS and RARS are quite similar in concept, although TORCS allows a human to drive and looks much nicer. Both, however, allow developers to create their own driving robots. Using a combination of inputs such as force vectors, car positions and track surfaces, developers can create logic and try to set the fastest time (or just be purely defensive and not let anyone pass).
This is such an intriguing concept to me, as there seems to be quite a bit of "feel" in driving. To be able to quantify that feel and make the most of it is certainly a difficult task.
It would be great if racing sim developers started offering this type of AI extension. I would love to start seeing folks competing as geeks as well as drivers.
Posted by jb at August 2, 2004 03:27 PM
