Roborace autonomous car takes a lap in Paris

At the Formula E Paris ePrix over the weekend, the driverless Roborace navigated a lap of the 1.9 km course all by itself — all 14 turns.

The autonomous car uses five lidar sensors, two radar sensors, 18 ultrasonic sensors, two optical speed sensors, six AI cameras and satellite positioning information to know where it is and navigate its route. All this data is processed by Nvidia’s Drive PX2, which can perform 24 trillion operations per second, according to a Roborace press release.

Which is fast. The Roborace car itself, however, is not. Yet.

The hardware is on board for some serious racing: four 300 kW motors and a 540 kW battery that can propel the car over 200 mph. But while it’s learning its route — and while the engineers are learning how the car learns — it fairly creeps along the track with a human-driven chaperone car following behind.

Check out the official video to see its first run in Paris. It’ll take another lap in Berlin during the next Formula E race and at races for the rest of the season.