Acronis and SIT to take part in Roborace

The Schaffhausen Institute of Technology (SIT) is entering a team in Roborace together with the Schaffhausen-based software development firm Acronis, details of which can be found in a press release. The team is taking part in the current Season Beta of the Roborace championships, which gets underway on September 24. In this series of races for autonomous electric cars, all teams use the same type of vehicle, but they are all responsible for programming their own algorithms for control and steering functions during the race.

The races themselves take place on real racing tracks, according to information in the press release. This time around, the Acronis and SIT team will monitor race processes online via the Roborace Race Control platform due to the coronavirus travel restrictions that remain in force.

“Sport speeds up the development of mobility technologies”, explains Ilya Shimchik, Team Leader of the joint SIT and Acronis team, before adding: “We pride ourselves on pushing the boundaries of autonomous driving by leveraging the benefits of AI and machine learning solutions that can make extremely reliable calculations”. Shimchik is convinced that his team possesses the requisite technologies to “emerge victorious against the world’s best”.

According to information contained in the press release, Roborace is the first racing championship in the world for autonomous electric cars. It was established with the aim of accelerating the development of autonomous software solutions. This year, Acronis was named as the official Cyber Protection Partner of Roborace, the press release explains. In this context, the company based in Schaffhausen is providing its cyber security solutions for use during the races.

The SIT was founded in 2019 and focuses on selected fields in connection with computer science and software engineering. The university was established at the initiative of Sergej Beloussov, who is also the founder of Acronis. He is also responsible for the largest investments in the SIT. The university project does, however, also receive cantonal funding as well.