Trimble partners with Roborace for its autonomous racing series

Trimble has partnered with Roborace, an autonomous racing series with electric-powered vehicles. As part of the alliance, Roborace will use Trimble’s Applanix POS LVX GNSS-inertial systems in its next-generation autonomous race cars for season one of the championship, which begins in September 2021.

As part of the technology and marketing alliance, Trimble will serve as the Official GNSS-Inertial Positioning Technology Partner and enable Roborace’s engineering team to leverage Trimble resources such as technology, services and expertise that it provides across a wide variety of industries and applications, Roborace said. Trimble also will utilize Roborace’s media platform in its global marketing initiatives.

Image: Roborace

“We are thrilled to be working with Roborace, the world’s first extreme competition of racing teams developing self-driving artificial intelligence for autonomous driving systems,” said Louis Nastro, director of land products at Applanix. “Trimble systems, software and solutions for positioning and orientation are designed for pinpoint accuracy, efficiency and ease of use, and are perfectly suited for autonomous vehicle applications such as Roborace.”

Roborace also looks forward to the partnership.

“At Roborace we are always looking for the best technology to incorporate into our cars and we’re thrilled to announce this alliance,” said Chip Pankow, chief championship officer at Roborace. “Trimble is a leader in the field and the small size and accuracy of the POS LVX is a perfect solution for us. These GNSS-inertial systems will be utilized in all vehicles participating in the Roborace championship.”

Roborace was created to accelerate autonomous software development by pushing the technology to its limits in a range of controlled environments. It also aims to educate and inform the world about autonomous driving. In 2019, the series held six events that drove more than 36 million multi-channel video views.

Designed to operate under the most difficult GNSS conditions found in urban and suburban environments, Trimble’s Applanix POS LV enables accurate positioning for road geometry, pavement inspection, GIS database and asset management, road surveying, vehicle dynamics and autonomous vehicle systems. POS LVX is a configuration of POS LV housed in a robust, rugged enclosure and easily incorporated into small vehicles, autonomous platforms and tight spaces of all types, Trimble said.