Self-driving tech firms take R&D to the track

WILLOWS, Calif. — Sometimes progress comes as two steps forward and one step back. But sometimes it comes with one full step backward.

Or more precisely, one full lap backward.

An engineering team from startup Point One Navigation accomplished that feat in autonomous mode on a blustery morning last week, sending its Lexus CT 200h in reverse around a 2-mile track at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Northern California at an event called Self Racing Cars. Then they did it again.

It might be the first time a self-driving vehicle has driven itself backward for an entire lap. Perhaps even the first time anyone has bothered to try.

"It's a bit of a parlor trick," said Aaron Nathan, Point One Navigation CEO and co-founder. "But most of the time, we're doing demos in a parking lot. The reality is those don't push the system."

But on a racetrack, he added, "it's magical to see we can be at the edge of control, based on satellites in space, and we can do things that most human drivers couldn't do."

More than winning a race — or racing at all — such performance-stretching stunts are the objective of Self Racing Cars, which provides a closed-course playground for individual tinkerers, for startups such as Tangram Vision and Arcimoto, and for more established companies such as Nvidia to test their self-driving software, sensors and ideas.

This year's event, held in mid-October and the first following a pandemic-related hiatus, attracted companies developing everything from lidar systems to three-wheeled electric delivery motorcycles and autonomous farming equipment. The brainchild of investor Joshua Schachter, Self Racing Cars further attracts venture capitalists, recruiters and even rivals interested in keeping tabs on their competitors.

Nothing captured the eclectic and grassroots spirit of the event more than Point One Navigation's autonomous negotiation of Thunderhill Racetrack in reverse. It was an idea that Nathan, project leader of Cornell University's DARPA Urban Challenge team, had mulled for more than a year. Over dinner the night before, he decided almost on a whim to attempt the backward lap. He and his team stayed up much of the night tweaking the same code that underpinned Cornell's Urban Challenge entry 15 years ago to make a reverse lap possible.

"We have a very simple simulator to test it to make sure the car doesn't careen off a cliff or something, and it basically showed it worked," he said. "We took the code and modified it to drive in reverse. The math works. It's all physics-based. You just have to make sure the controls tell the car to go to the next point correctly."

Point One Navigation enables precise location mapping with proprietary technology. Using satellites and other ground-based infrastructure, it can identify the position of vehicles to within 10 centimeters of their actual location — about the width of a softball.

The company's Lexus CT 200h did its first lap in painstaking fashion, taking 18 minutes to complete the 2-mile course during a trial run. Point One reached 25 mph during a second run, completing it in five minutes. Three other teams — using everything from one-fifth scale cars to three-wheeled motorcycles — completed conventional, forward-facing autonomous trips during the weekend-long event.

But not all aspired to complete laps. Monarch Tractor brought the undisputed slowest vehicle. The purpose of that company's presence was less about performance and more about showcasing the wide range of potential uses for autonomous and electric vehicles, said Tanner Begin, digital marketing coordinator at Monarch.

"Much of the automotive space has influenced and led the autonomous vehicle industry as a whole," Begin said. "What we've done is take a lot of that technology and put it into the farming environment. Coming to Self Racing Cars is a way to stay connected with that foundation and build some excitement around what's possible in the farming industry."

The company is in Livermore, Calif., at a geographical crossroads of the Bay Area's technology-focused talent pool and agricultural roots. It was spun out of Motivo Engineering in 2019 and counts Tesla and Zoox alum Mark Schwager as its president.

Its subcompact tractors carry batteries that last eight to 10 hours per charge and can be swapped for new ones in roughly 10 minutes. Designed and built from scratch, the tractors have hitches for Category 1 and 2 farming implements. Vineyards and high-density orchard and blueberry farms are targeted as initial users.

Parked adjacent to Monarch's tractor along the Thunderhill paddock: Adam Rodnitzky's classic 1971 Austin Mini. Neither would set the track ablaze with speed, but Rodnitzky retrofitted the vehicle with lidar sensors not to compete on lap times but to collect data.

His company, Tangram Vision, has created a software development kit that makes it easier to integrate sensors and gain insights on their real-world performance while deployed on everything from drones to self-driving cars. Self Racing Cars gave the company an ideal venue to take its testing to the next level.

"There are a few things we haven't been able to test in a harsh environment," Rodnitzky said. "From a lidar perspective, we need to really test them in a harsh, moving environment. What better place to do that than on a racetrack?"