From the images that I have seen of the track the inside lane looks shorter than the outside one.
When I was involved with slot car racing this was compensated for by making the track some form of figure eight so that at some stage the inside track became the outside track and vice versa.
Lane lengths
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 - 10:19
#1
straygrey
Lane lengths
If one organised this form of racing on an international basis every continent and/or country could have their own local competition and let us say once per year the top contenders from each continent/country could compete against each other at a location to be chosen by the organisers.
Could be a lot more interesting, at least for me, than the current full size F1, which I am finding quite boring.
It is interesting you should mention this.
The idea was discussed yesterday about having another track hosted somewhere else in the world, like America for example.
Ideally having races all around the world would be awesome.
For now we will host all of the races for the first series and see how many people would be interested in this idea.
If anyone reading this has the available floor space to be able to make a track on the same sort of scale and would like to volunteer to host races please send us a message :)
I have been into slot cars since the 60's and in 2000-2003 operated three commercial 1:24 6 lane wood tracks. I have kept a 20 x 40 foot banked oval but thought to make it smaller or autonomous.
I thought to use an SBC such as Raspberry Pi 3 for the slot controller but Formula Pi is a better fit.
I also have the pictured , stock 4 lane Circuit de Catalunya https://www.circuitcat.com/en/ using Scalextric Sport track with various race management solutions.
Also have custom 24 hour Daytona Le Mans shown in Blog.
I am new member of Make It Labs in Nashua New Hampshire and want to bring Formula racing to that space. Again Formula Pi fits my plans.
See my web site at http://CoolGames.Net especially the Blog to see my plans.
Lee T. Davy
Cool Games Network
Groton , MA USA
email available via PM.
The inside lane is significantly shorter than the outside lane.
As a quick guide:
Starting lanes will be decided by random assignment so everyone has a chance at starting in the best position.
During the race the robots may use the entire track, they are not required to stick with a given lane.
The idea is that following the outside should be easier for the robots.
To get the robot to follow the inside without crashing will prove more difficult as all of the corners become sharper.
The shortest possible distance around the track requires the robot to follow the inside for most of the track, but make a straight line between turn 2 and turn 4.
This will prove difficult on race day as other robots will also want to do the same thing :)
Using the simulator (which is admittedly not running perfectly on my Mac) it seems like the starting lane can make a big difference. I've yet to complete a full lap starting from lane 3 whereas starting from lanes 1 & 2 appears to work really well. From lane 3 the bot goes off-line very quickly and doesn't recover.
While the starting lane will make a difference the standard code should handle all five.
It is particularly strange that lane 3 is failing as that is the lane we have done the most testing with.
Where does the code go wrong around the track?
For slot car racing, you can't change lanes. In Formula Pi, there is no requirement to stay in your starting lane. This normally causes havoc at the first corner as everyone dives for the inside lane.
There is a slight advantage to having the inside lane at start, but thanks to random grid assignments and the fact that navigation code is the significant factor in lap times, this isn't a problem.
In the style of most forms of motorsport, the lines that you choose your code to navigate around the corners are very significant to your lap times.
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