Record breakers – Google Cloud and Formula E host AI hackathon to trailblaze motorsport technology

Claiming a Guinness World Record, introducing the sport to new faces and hosting a competition that focused on inclusion – all in a day’s work when Google Cloud and Formula E collaborated last year.

Some 1,130 people attended an AI hackathon event staged around the London E-Prix in July as Google Cloud and Formula E offered the chance for contestants to get their hands on reams of data to tackle challenges set for them.

The day was the brainchild of John Abel, technical director, office of the CTO at Google Cloud and Eric Ernst, head of technology at Formula E, and the number of participants broke the world record for such an event.

“The hardest thing is making AI exciting for people outside of the typical workplace,” Abel told Autosport.

“The telemetry data in motorsport is usually secret. It’s usually put away. No one really gets to see it. No one can really interact with it. What I love about Formula E is the way that they want to trailblaze technology, it is second to none.

“60% of the people who attended had never done AI. So they had never seen the data and most of the tables, they’d never met their team members before.

“It was very inclusive, and everyone stayed until the end, it was quite an amazing experience to see all these people working on these challenges.”

Earlier this month, Formula E announced a new AI and technology partnership with Google Cloud that will support the series both on and off-track.

The multi-year agreement sees Google Cloud become Formula E’s official cloud technology services partner and official cloud security partner, building on work the two companies have previously collaborated on.

Last year, Formula E were keen to offer as many data points as possible for the hackathon event, as Ernst explains.

“John and I thought about it and decided to take a full data set of an entire race,” he said.

“Everything from accreditation to operational data, to CCTV footage of the track, telemetry, timing, onboard cameras, anything, and just take that entire lot and write challenges to it and have people use that entire lot to build whatever they want to build with AI and let people kind of go wild with it.”

With the groups working on their challenges as the practice session for the E-Prix took place next door, the winners ultimately emerged in the shape of the Anocoris team.

“Inclusion is a huge thing for Formula E so we’re constantly looking at how can we extend that in any part of the sport,” added Ernst.

Google Cloud and Formula E AI hackathon

Photo by: Google

“The winning entry took the commentary of the English language broadcast and took a very natural voice that Google Deep Mind just released and made a two-minute podcast summary that you could listen to the race as a catch up, and not only in English, but you could also listen to any language you wanted.

“So if you wanted to listen in Hindi, or if you wanted to listen in Portuguese, you could then have that as well. And they built that within hours, to a very high quality.

“It was motorsports, it was AI, it was media, it was content, it was for the fans and it just filled all the gaps. And the team did an amazing job there.

The AI-created summary podcast was also something Formula E could harness for their own channels, with tests on the service having taken place and potentially rolling out for fans later this season.

“We liked it because it filled an immediate gap that we had – we could take that, we could put straight on Spotify or your podcast platform,” said Ernst.

“We can make it available to anyone we want to in any language, and it’s pretty much produced 30 seconds after the race is finished, because that transcription is available, and then it gets built.”