From Racetrack to Roadway: The Impact of Motorsport on Automotive Innovation

This episode on the LeddarTech Labs features Ed Bernardon, former Vice President of Motorsports/Racing Strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software and Pierre Olivier, CTO of LeddarTech and well-known industry speaker at ADAS and AD technology events and conferences. They discuss how innovation in the motorsports has an influence on on-road vehicles, especially within the domains of ADAS and AD and the rise of autonomous racing series across the world.

Podcast Transcript

Michelle: Hello and welcome to the LeddarTech Lab podcast. I’m your host Michelle Dawn Mooney. Today we will discuss the intersection of autonomous vehicle racing and automotive technology for passenger vehicles. To talk more on this we are joined by two guests Ed Bernardon and Pierre Olivier. Ed Bernardon is an expert in vehicle technology, design and motorsport innovation with more than 30 years of experience as the former vice president of motorsports racing strategy at Siemens Digital Industry Software and focused on integrating advancements from racing into everyday vehicle technology. His expertise includes autonomous and connected vehicles, lightweight structures and sustainable motorsports.

Pierre is LeddarTech’s CTO and is recognized for his technical expertise and vision. He has decades of experience developing high-tech products and is a well-known industry speaker at ADAS and AD technology events and conferences.

Welcome to both of you. Good to have you here.

Ed and Pierre: Looking forward to this conversation today. Thanks for having us on.

Michelle: Yeah, I really am excited about this because it’s going to be fun and it’s going to be educational. So let’s start here. How does motorsport influence everyday cars? And operating a team in Formula One or other kind of leagues is rather costly. So why do the likes of Toyota, Mercedes, Honda, Ferrari and other OEMs compete? Is it just a branding exercise or do the advantages trickle down to product development?

Ed: Well, let’s hit the branding first because the thing you have to remember about racing is it’s really a marketing business. So branding is really important. And if you go to the highest levels of racing, which is Formula One, they have roughly one and a half billion viewers annually. And there’s a series on Netflix called Drive to Survive, which has really accelerated the popularity of that sport, especially with the younger crowd, with the Gen Z’s and on up. So yes, racing can certainly be leveraged from a branding standpoint.

But the other thing, and really what we’re mainly talking about today, is that racing is also a place where you can refine the technologies, innovate the technologies and really accelerate the development of technologies that the automotive industry can use. And the reason that there’s such an acceleration is, again using Formula One as an example, the total prize money in the season for Formula One is a billion dollars or almost a billion dollars. So there’s a real push from race to race to continually improve and find that smallest advantage so that you can, you know, win. Because the winners are going to take the most money, the winners are going to get the sponsors that will, that billion is actually very, very small compared to the total sponsorship that all the teams have. That’s just the prize money.

So historically, rearview mirrors, seatbelts, disc brakes, antilock brakes, radial tires, and even more recently, things like in Formula E, which is an electric race series, 800 volt battery system, silicon carbide converters, software to manage the power from the batteries and make them last as long as you can. Even, there’s even another series now called Extreme H that does hydrogen, so they’re developing fuel cells and the infrastructure to deliver hydrogen. And you couple that with the push that racing now has for sustainability and the use of 100% sustainable fuels, for instance, all this is innovated at a rapid pace that ultimately will impact the automotive industry.

And that, you know, the topic of this conversation, autonomous vehicle systems, it’s time for, you know, autonomous vehicle racing to take its role to advancing that aspect of automotive technology.

Michelle: I like how you use the term accelerating and acceleration and pun may be intended or not intended, but it was a perfect word with what we’re talking about today. So the last couple of years have seen advent of autonomous car racing across geographies, types and sizes, the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League, the Indy Autonomous Challenge and CES also held a racing event in 2024 for autonomous vehicles. What impact do these events have on consumers, racing enthusiasts, OEMs, and the wider industry and consumers?

Ed: Well, if you look at the consumer, if he can, if a consumer can see race cars autonomously on a race track, oh my god, if they can, if a race car can go autonomously at 200 miles per hour, then it certainly do it safely, then it’s probably going to be safe for me on a city street. So you certainly have that. There’s also, since it is entertainment, and it can draw you in, you know, I’ve had some conversations about autonomous racing, sometimes I get the question, is it remote control? Oh, no, no, no, that’s actually AI driven, a race car driver computer that’s driving the whole thing. And so, but in order for that to happen, it has to become evolved into a true event, an entertainment event. And a lot of the autonomous racing that’s happened in the past, like Rover Racer, the Indy Autonomous Challenge, and certainly the Indy Autonomous Challenge has mainly been a student-based project where the students come in and they show off their cars. A lot of great technology has been developed. But I think the A2RL this past April took a real big step. There were student teams there, but there was also a professional team called Code19. It was actually an American team. They did wheel-to-wheel racing, they had a fan zone, they had, oh, I don’t know, like 10,000 or so, maybe over 10,000 live attendees, and hospitality that was comparable to what you might get in a Formula One paddock club. So in that sense, I think it’s a way to get the consumer to, you know, get into autonomous cars and start to really understand what’s behind them. If you can make it legitimate from this branding standpoint, then OEMs won’t be afraid to associate themselves with it. Because if they don’t think it’s a real event that’s going to be around for a while, and it’s more than just a student event, they’ll probably not going to want anything with it because they don’t want to hurt their reputation. If you can get past that, then autonomous racing can take the same place that racing has had over the last almost hundred years in making, in innovating, and as you say, accelerating technology.

Now, the last thing I think is, or the last or maybe the most important was the racing enthusiasts. And I’ve heard people say, racing enthusiasts, that who wants to watch a bunch of computers go around in a circle, right? And, and I think that there is something to that, because when it really comes down to it in racing, you don’t root for the technology, you don’t root for the disc brakes or the best wing on a car, except maybe if you’re a Ferrari. Ferrari is a special case, everyone roots, Ferrari has a lot of fans, you root for the driver. And I think that personality of the driver will be replaced in autonomous racing with the personalities of the teams that actually create that AI driver. So in that sense, I think it’s going to touch the consumers from a marketing standpoint, OEMs are not going to be one of left out if they see that innovation is occurring. And the racing enthusiasts, I think it’s going to expand, it’s going to become that person in the university that’s studying AI and wants an exciting project to work on that’s probably getting that marketing punch out there.

Michelle: And I love how you talked about the personalization of having a human driver, what happens when there is no human there? Who are we rooting for? Why are we rooting for a computer, but it’s not necessarily the computer, but the team behind the computer. And I think of that show, BattleBots, although it’s remote controlled, not autonomous, but you’re not necessarily hoping that Randy the robot wins over Zelda the Zygote, whatever they call them. But it’s the team, you see the stories of how the team comes together, and you know that they have this emotion connected to it, and you’re really kind of rooting for the team behind it. And we will always need those humans to take us to get to the level of autonomous, whatever, fill in the blank. So Pierre, I want to ask you from a technical perspective, how is AV racing different than on-road ADAS and AV?

Pierre: Great question. And it’s quite actually quite different. Because first of all, the environment itself is much more controlled. If you compare racetrack driving to like, on the road, like urban driving, for example, it’s completely different. The number of like edge cases that you will encounter is less. And what that means also is the use of simulation is much higher. And if you look at how many of these like teams and even some of these racing series, there is a simulation aspect as well as a live on the on the track aspect. So and this is where, of course, it’s also very important, because typically, if I drive my car in the highway, I drive at like four 10s or whatever, whereas, of course, part of the entertainment is you want to see these things driven at as close to the limit as possible. So and that’s where if you take on the road, like autonomous driving, of course, the autopilot can take a safe stance, it will slow down if the road is slippery, and so on. Whereas now part and to bring to come back to Ed’s point earlier about the show or the entertainment aspect of it is you want to see these things go to where you feel they’re they’re getting close to the limit. So so from from control loop standpoint, and controlling the like the chassis and leveraging chassis dynamics and all of that, it’s much more challenging than than on the road driving. So of course, the technologies themselves are the same. But the approach, if you want to make it a good show, and if you want to make it something that that’s worthwhile, you have to have that aspect. Now, the other part is, of course, you take like spec racing, for example, where all the cars are the same, what makes the difference is the is the pilot and pilot, like, they’re driving style and personality, and so on. And that’s what also engages the audience. So how do you translate that into AI, where it’s basically, it’s the the programmers and the developers that are basically they’re doing this behind the scenes. Now, how do you how do you give a personality to that AI, so that people will root for the for the team and root for the for the vehicle?

That’s also a challenge. Because if you think of it, you’re starting from much more equal base from from technology standpoint, everybody uses the same AI networks and the same data sets, and so on. So how do you get that that AI personality into into play, I think is going to be the biggest challenge to making this not just an event that’s cool from technology standpoint, but also something that that that people are attracted to, from from a entertainment standpoint.

Ed: You know, to add to what Pierre said there, in in the H2RL competition, I think there were eight teams, and they all created a 3d virtual avatar, the code 19, when I recall, it’s called Maverick, and it became the symbol of each of the teams. And, and, and I think that that’s really an avenue where autonomous racing can open things up. Thinking about an OEM, or a supplier to an OEM, the thing they like about racing is it, it’s an event that lasts two or three days qualifying practice the race itself, you’re spending time when you bring in a customer with with them for that total three days, what a great time to get to know them, maybe close a sale, who knows what. And in this particular case, if you start to bring them into this AI powered environment, maybe the avatar is something you can see with with the Apple Vision Pro headset or something like that, giving you a tour of the garage, I think it’s opening up a whole new thing that’s, that’s, that will be attractive to the traditional motorsports fan, because you’re looking at a Formula race car. But at the same time, it’s surrounded by the latest in technology, driven by these simulations and things that that Pierre was talking about.

Pierre: Yeah, I think I think that’s a very good point. Because if you just translate or replace the pilot with the AI, then it’s it’s, it’s, it’s like technology, curiosity. But if you translate that experience into something that I like, I love the idea of the avatar and how you make it almost cartoon, not cartoon like, but really, where it’s obvious that it’s not human. But it’s some AI, I think it can be can be very, very, like, interesting thing to watch on its own. And not just as a, just it’s not just another form of traditional race car driving.

Michelle: I want to talk about safety for a minute, because of course, it is paramount, even if you do not have a driver involved. And Pierre, you talked about, you know, pushing the limits, because from a audience standpoint, we want to see how fast things can go and kind of getting right up there to the edge. So when it comes to safety, how can AV racing, safety be enhanced? And then what can we learn from AV racing that can be implemented in other categories of racing?

Ed: Oh, the, the technology from autonomous cars can certainly be used to make the drivers safer, the spectators, and even give information to the teams that are running the events on how they can make it safer. And that can be a combination, say, of sensors, and perception systems that are in the cars themselves, or using vehicle to vehicle, let’s say, to make it safer. Or vehicle to infrastructure communication, to make things safer on and off the track. And for instance, I was involved in a project with the FIA, which is the sanctioning body for Formula One and rally and several other forms of racing. And in this project, what we did rally cars run on, I guess, say, out in the woods, but on dirt roads, and the spectators get right to the edge of the track, sometimes even on the track a little bit. And so what we did was we put sensors on the rally car to detect that, that spectator that’s hiding in the bushes waiting to pop out and get that perfect Instagram shot. Right. And, and the idea there was not to take control of the car, but rather, if you can detect spectators are in dangerous areas, send a message back to the infrastructure to the people running the event to get them out of there.

Now, on the track, this combinate this will certainly like vehicle to vehicle communication. There’s a lot of times when a race car driver doesn’t see everything in front of them that they should be able to see. Typically, you’ll see these accidents and cars are spinning and going all over the place. A driver is used to this. And if the accidents right in front of them, the car that’s right in front of them, you’ll be able to weave through that because time slows down somehow. If anyone that’s raced out there, they’ll be able to explain that to you. However, if you’re going over a hill and there’s an accident just past the crest of that hill, or around a hairpin turn, a real tight turn, or in the case of rally where there could be a lot of dust, extreme weather, because they do race in the rain, that kind of thing, then this vehicle to vehicle communication or visibility is limited would be really good. And the classic one is, let’s say there’s a train of five cars in a row. The one in front has a problem. The second and the third sort of peel off because they saw what was going, but the curtain opens up and that fifth car just goes right into the first one. So I think that that’s certainly vehicle to vehicle communication could help there and what’s learned and that could apply to commercial cars.

I think also using the sensors, it could be cameras, it could be LiDAR, but maybe evaluating the tires or the state of the cars that you’re racing with to see if they might be in a dangerous condition or something is about to happen that could be a problem. Taking control, though, of a race car, I think is probably a bit far away because it is one thing to, you know, you got a human life now, this is a little bit different than when you’re just racing autonomous cars. But I think it’s also a challenge is how do you really communicate? If you do find that you’re in danger, you’ve got fractions of a second to communicate that. And the ability to communicate that in a way that you get the attention of the driver, but not distract them to the point where they can’t drive anymore is a challenge. But what could be learned there could certainly apply in commercial applications to keep, as Pierre was saying, in those edge cases, super high speed, adverse conditions, you know, combinations of those things. That’s where I think what could be learned here in the racing world could certainly help keep, you know, your drivers on the street safer in those edge conditions.

Michelle: Thank you again for being here today. And I want to thank all of you for tuning in and listening to the LeddarTech Lab podcast and be sure to subscribe and check out our other episodes of the LeddarTech Labs podcast. Thanks again for joining us. I’m your host, Michelle Dawn Mooney. We hope to connect with you on another podcast soon.

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