ROME – For some companies, a simple circuit is not enough. To set the world speed record for a self-driving car, you need the runway of the Space Shuttle, and more precisely that of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. It is here in fact that a few days ago the car of the Politecnico di Milano-PoliMOVE reached 309.3 km / h, crushing the previous record of 282.4 hours held by Roborace.
The record was obtained as an average over 1 km of two consecutive attempts in the opposite direction (to eliminate the influence of the wind), and in a few days the team will try to replicate the feat on the Atlanta circuit, this time on a car track. and not on a straight.
On 7 January the same PoliMOVE team won the Indy Autonomous Challenge in Las Vegas, the first head-to-head race between cars driven by artificial intelligence, where it reached the track speed record of 278.4 km / h. The competition, held at the wheel of all Dallara AV-21 branded cars, involved some of the most important universities in the world. (fp)