AI: Porsche Cup uses Microsoft resource for strategies – 12/02/2023 – Tech

Now a Porsche Cup driver, Rubens Barrichello had an episode in Formula 1 that shows how every detail matters in a race. The driver came from 18th position to win the German GP, ​​in Hockenheim, in 2000.

For this, in addition to luck, with an invader that stopped the race and safety car on two occasions, the driver and his team made a bold decision not to put rain tires, after the start of the precipitation.

The choice gave the Brazilian an advantage over second-placed Mika Häkkinen, as the low volume of water provided better conditions for the tires for a dry track.

Decisions like these will be helped by the new real-time monitoring system, with artificial intelligence, launched by Microsoft in the last Porsche Cup race, held at the Interlagos racetrack on the 17th.

The technology monitors the entire interaction between the driver and the car, to detect which attitudes waste time and which improve performance.

To do this, the Data Fabric program works with so-called telemetric data, the same data used to monitor people’s behavior on social networks based on mouse and keyboard movement.

Sensors capture how much the driver steers the steering wheel, how hard he presses the brake during a curve and other commands to the car. To this information, the system adds tire condition, amount of fuel in the tank, car weight and other data.

With this, teams are able to make informed decisions, based on data and statistical calculations. Even television stations will be able to receive data in real time to inform the public, according to the vice president of technology and solutions at Microsoft Brazil, Cristiano Faig.

This feature should be available in Porsche Cup broadcasts as early as the 2024 championship, according to Microsoft.

The reporter attended the Data Fabric demonstration and saw the dashboard, with several performance curves, heat schemes in parts of the car.

Every detail on screen becomes essential, when cars that reach speeds close to 300 km/h compete for seconds to win the competition.

Around with pilot Max Wilson, the Sheet watched how drivers gain speed with every available meter to accelerate before the braking that precedes the curve.

The car also gains speed when it has less fuel in the tank and less weight on the tires. The risk is ending up in a dry breakdown or with bald tires, with less traction and safety when cornering.

Telemetry data is collected in real time through an internet of things device (IOTs), developed by IturanMOB, the mobility arm of the vehicle monitoring company Ituran.

To reduce the time for exchanging information, called latency, without access to 5G in the car, the company used a private network, for exclusive use, which guarantees greater speed as there is no competition in sending and receiving data. This reduces latency to almost zero.

“Our IOTs are connected to the car’s logical network by induction. With this, we do not interfere with the originality of the Porsche Cup cars, as well as the more than 2,000 IOTs already in use in Brazil for mobility and vehicle sharing purposes”, states the founder of IturanMOB, Paulo Henrique Andrade.

“The infrastructure, provided as a service, allows the internal Porsche Cup team to maintain control over data, updating providers, security patches and relying on cloud-native resources for responsible and secure handling of information, valuing privacy and compliance of the operation”, says Microsoft in a note.

Microsoft Brazil’s vice president of innovation, Cristiano Faig, compares the technology to a blood test. “The model extracts a series of information that allows it to make a useful prognosis for the pilot.”

The Data Fabric is not yet equipped with generative AI, such as ChatGPT, capable of indicating text responses for each situation. It also does not intervene in the athlete’s control over the vehicle.

Will the pilot be replaced by the robot?

The chief executive of the Porsche Cup in Brazil, Dener Pires, says he does not see a scenario in which drivers will be replaced by artificial intelligence.

“We’ve had the case for computer-assisted traction control for some time, and it’s the driver who chooses when to use it. Some use it in one corner, but don’t use it in another, the team also evaluates what works best.”

He assumes, however, that there may be public interest in a competition between man and machine, as was the chess match between champion Garry Kasparov and the IBM computer Deep Blue.

In 1996, the human won a sequence of six matches 4-2. In 1997, after improvements to the machine, Deep Blue won 3-2, with a draw.

Competitions between people and artificial intelligence are already common in video games. In the case of cars, the main applications of autonomous vehicles are still restricted to urban mobility.