Artificial intelligence touch in Formula 1
F1 and officials can already see whether a vehicle is going beyond the white lines in some corners with sensors coming from the vehicles and the track. However, in some cases, reviews may need to be done manually. To shorten these inspection times, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the governing body of motorsport, announced that it will use Computer Vision technology in this weekend’s season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
This approach will initially be used to determine the number of pixels that cross the line at the edge of the track. The FIA does not currently plan to fully automate investigations into track boundary violations. Instead, it wants to significantly reduce the number of potential rule violations sent to authorities for manual review.
At the Austrian Grand Prix in July, four people had to review nearly 1,200 potential violations. After some track boundary violations went unpunished at the US Grand Prix in October, officials acknowledged they needed to find a new approach. The Computer Vision system aims to eliminate these problems. The FIA hopes to reduce the number of potential infringements that officials manually review to around 50 per race.