Gear Up for Formula 1: Three Ways AI is Transforming Racing

Austin TX

21 October, 2021

10:10 AM

Description

With Formula 1 driving into town this weekend, our friends over at Valkyrie, an Austin-based applied science company that works in motorsports, shared their thoughts on ways Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming racing.  It seems over the last decade, AI has taken motorsports to a whole new level. From keeping drivers safe and designing faster cars, to steering setup decisions and elevating the fan experience, AI and machine learning have helped thousands of drivers and their race teams get set up for success. Whether you're watching from the stands or in your home this weekend, here are three ways your favorite race teams may be leveraging AI to beat the competition, according to Valkyrie's Toni Calderon.   Designing a Faster Car With piles of real life and simulator data, machine learning and AI techniques are being used frequently to assist engineers in car component design, including designing faster cards. Building models that evaluate the performance of simulated new parts is one way that these techniques save time and money when designing cars. Engineers can now take a set of real world performance, and fit a machine learning model to it. This enables them to evaluate the performance of an unlimited amount of similar, simulated parts without having to build them in real life. A Winning Setup Since practice is so limited in Formula 1, teams must make rapid decisions during the race weekend about how they will set up their cars. Algorithms and AI techniques can process practice data during the race weekend that would normally be too gigantic for even a team of hundreds of engineers. AI can tell engineers both what setup decisions are most important for on track performance, and where to look to find those answers in the data. Elevating the Fan Experience Formula 1 produces some of the most exciting racing in the world. Though the race itself tells a good story, adding data on top of the visual experience can help explain objectively how the race is progressing. AWS has partnered with F1 to use 70 years of historical race data to develop ways of illustrating the strategic decisions that drivers and teams must make during the race. New ways of analyzing race results and timing can also provide deep insights into the performances of competitors during the race. Motorsports is adopting AI technologies in a wide range of areas including design, strategy, R&D, aerodynamics, simulations, and more. And, with the fast adoption of hybrid and electric race cars, AI technologies will only continue to be more important, with the development that starts at the racetrack soon equipping cars in our own driveways.