AI drives spectator safety at rally racing

Keeping spectators safe at rally racing events can be difficult given the large and often remote areas of terrain that races cover.

The world authority on motorsport, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) powered safety system to improve spectator safety at rally races.

Debuted for the opening round of the 2025 FIA European Rally Championship at the Rally Sierra Morena in Spain earlier this month, the AI safety camera (AISC) system consists of self-sustaining, GPU-enabled cameras mounted on competing rally cars to identify spectators along the race route. The AI system processes the data received by the cameras and transmits rapid alerts to officials to take necessary safety measures.

“As an organisation, the FIA really is driven by data, and data analysis is something that we are constantly doing in the safety department,” Clément Lauté, head of operational safety at FIA, tells SiliconRepublic.com.

“Understanding as much as we can about incidents that occur across all of motor sport is really vital for us as we determine what areas we need to focus on improving and dedicating our research and development resources.

“The AI safety camera really came about as a result of this constant process – we are analysing every incident that happens in a regulated motor sport event all over the world, and we identified spectator safety in grassroots, national and regional rallies as an area for us to focus on.”

Rallying presents challenges for spectator safety, given the large and often remote areas of terrain that races cover. The FIA says that the AISC allows safety officials to identify and address potential risks before they escalate, offering a level of oversight that isn’t possible with manual monitoring alone.

FIA Road Sport director Emilia Abel said that the organisation has sophisticated safety systems at the World Championship level and the goal is to develop at grassroots, national and regional levels as well.

Croatian start-up Calirad, which specialises in developing motorsport safety solutions, collaborated with the FIA to develop the AISC system.

Last year, the Zagreb-headquartered company received a grant from the Croation Ministry of Science and Education to develop its advanced software for rally racing robotic perception in collaboration with the Laboratory for Autonomous Systems and Mobile Robotics group at the University of Zagreb.

“Calirad is a very small but dedicated organisation who were really behind the development phase of the AI software,” Lauté says.

The project is still in the early stages, and Lauté is excited to analyse the data from the rally in Spain and continue to develop the concept and bring costs down. He also wants to encourage national sporting authorities to make the system available for use. Since the launch, Lauté says that several authorities have approached them about deploying the system at their events.

He’s confident the project will have “a real positive impact on spectator safety”.

The next step is to write a set of specifications to allow organisations to create and develop their own AISC systems.

“As with so many of our safety innovations,” Lauté says, “it’s not just about the technology, but making the technology accessible all over the world.”

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