Formula 1 wants to use AI to check whether track limits are being exceeded

The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the international federation of Formula 1, among others, has announced that it will use AI to check whether track limits are respected. The technology will be tested for the first time this weekend during the race in Abu Dhabi.

The Computer Vision technology must be able to calculate with pixel accuracy whether the wheels of Formula 1 cars cross the white boundary lines, explains the FIA. The AI ​​should help determine more quickly whether all four wheels exceed the track limits and therefore constitute an actual infringement. Only those cases are then assessed manually.

The FIA ​​hopes this will reduce the approximately 800 manual assessments per race to 50 and thus ‘remove the cases that clearly do not require human assessment’. According to FIA CEO Tim Malyon, employees will then have more time to assess situations and processing speed will be increased.

According to Reuters In July, during the Grand Prix in Austria, four people had to assess a total of 1,200 potential track limit violations. At the race in Qatar in October, there were 141 possible violations, of which 51 were actual violations. Nevertheless, some violations were still overlooked, the news agency said.

The aim is for the AI ​​to become better and better at checking track boundaries as it learns over time. Malyon says that in some areas humans are still “winning” in assessing potential violations, but that “automated, real-time monitoring systems are ultimately the way forward.”