When Roborace kicks off, it will be the world's first racing series for driverless cars. So far, it's promised plenty, but is yet to deliver any wheel-to-wheel driverless action. Details about the car's design have been released, but there's been no video of a driverless racer actually on the track. Until now, that is, because the Roborace team has released the first fleeting glimpses of a development mule labelled DevBot.

The Roborace series is set to run in conjunction with the 2016/2017 Formula E season. Cars will be controlled by a central Nvidia AI brain, using cameras and radar sensors to navigate the pack of all-electric racers around tight city streets.

New Holland NH Drive Concept

It might look like your run-of-the-mill T8 Blue Power tractor, but the NH Drive is packing some clever self-driving hardware under its skin.

Thanks to its clever inbuilt software and the accompanying apps, farmers are able to kick back and watch as the tractor drives itself to a field, starts working and then returns itself to base afterwards. Okay, so it's not quite that simple: the (private) paths between the tractor's shed and the field need to be mapped, for one.

Once it arrives at the field, inbuilt software is able to consider its shape and size, along with the size of the implement attached to the back of the trailer, and plot the most efficient course around it. If the radar, LiDar or cameras detect an obstacle, the farmer is notified and asked to decide how the tractor should handle the obstruction.

That's not quite as easy as, say, just swerving around it, but when you're towing a massive trailer and trying to run in perfectly mapped straight lines, swerving isn't necessarily an option.

Farmers are able to control and monitor the NH Drive through the accompanying desktop and mobile software. There's a path-plotting screen and four live camera views, as well as data about engine speed and fuel levels. The system is also able to autonomously seed, and farmers are able to monitor and tweak a huge range of parameters surrounding seeding.

It's worth bearing in mind, self steering systems already exist. Keeping a tractor tracking straight along rough ground is actually quite difficult, as is following the same predetermined path perfectly. GPS farming systems already do this to a certain extent, although they lack the level of autonomy you get in the NH Drive concept.

Designed to serve as a base for teams to hone their software for the real Roborace cars, DevBot looks nothing like the futuristic Daniel Simon creation we saw earlier this year. There's a cabin to hold a driver or engineer, and none of the sensors and cameras have been covered up.

Like the other autonomous NH Drive, this was designed to be remotely monitored and programmed. It also uses the same combination of sensors to detect obstacles and warn farmers, asking them to plot the ideal course around it without tearing up the field.

It's not designed to look pretty though, it's purpose is to give engineers invaluable information about how the car "thinks" when it's out on the track. So the DevBot is fitted with the same drivetrain, sensors, computers and communication systems as the final racer.

A fully-finished Roborace car will be make its public debut at the Formula E open practice sessions in Donington, UK, on August 24. In the meantime, check out the DevBot in action in the video below.