When riding around with Constance and Genie in Watopia, I’ve noticed random accelerations on flat terrain by the bots. Constance will go from 46kph to anywhere between 48 and 50kph seemingly out of nowhere (no surface change, no gradient change, constant 4.2 wkg). This will last for somewhere like 5- 10 seconds sometimes then back to normal. There are no riders in front of the bot that are visible either, and nobody will have come through to the front so it’s like the bot gets draft in random places. my question is: how are the pacer bots set up? Is it recorded data overlaid onto the world? And if it’s recorded is it possible the recording includes draft from other riders? Or is it possible that pacer bots see event riders (and can draft them) that aren’t visible to others (and can’t draft)?
Yep, experience this all the time.
Ride Constance almost daily and on every course, there will be odd spot that the pacer just launches it and drops the entire group.
Same place on each lap
i can also confirm this. was on tempus with constance today in the morning - the group averaged 46kph on 100km. on the flat parts she was holding between 48-50kph while maintaining the normal wkg. 
i’ve seen this in Makuri, too. the downhill to the boardwalk after the shisa sprint seems to do it pretty consistently. i saw it with Maria and Coco.
Yip I can confirm ride genie for 2hrs today constantly randomly surging kept getting dropped is it me or is it the bot 
Absolutely- this is happening and Constance managed to drop the entire group this morning. Someone left a tiny group, I sprinted to close it and the rest were gone. I couldn’t maintain 4.6w-5.0/kg to stay with Constance on my own so backed off.
The rest tried to chase back but no hope, they all ended up dropped.
Exactly what I experienced. Way too fast. Zwift - what have you done?
Constance alone or at front shouldn’t be going that fast.
We have to get this on video or else it “didn’t happen”. That’s the only way to prove it. I’ll use QuickTime screen recording tonight.
Robo pacers using TT frame physics and the special TTT draft physics with road frame graphics? 
I’m seeing more comments on this than I would like - even though my experience has been pretty normal when riding with Coco 
I’ve asked the team to have a look to see if they are seeing any strange behaviour.
Watch Constance. It’s more obvious. You’ll see the bot go from 46-ish to 49/50kph staying at 4.2 with nobody in front. It’s more noticeable now 1) I think ebcause of the PD4 dynamics with double draft and 2) fewer people and higher power with Constance so fewer people churn through to the front of the bot.
Also, from a friend, a certain application that won’t be named helps see what’s going on.
Had this happen with Jacques this evening on a 40km ride - really odd surges by robopacer off the front at random times
Glad I’m not the one going crazy!
I was doing a light warmup with Coco the other day on Volcano loop, clockwise, and if I recall, the segment between, or just after the two short climbs on the northwest corner, while I never saw an increase in w/kg, Coco … basically just got chucked through the blob like we were nothing.
I ended up getting dropped from XP bonus because of it too.
James for what it’s worth, my dropping of the XP is kind of a big notation to make here again due to that shift in how close you have to be to a pace partner to get XP bonuses.
Coco went from being with a pack, launched out like 5+ seconds ahead, then basically entered that “nobody is near me, so XP bonus range is like 2ft”
All of this happened super fast too; certainly too fast to react to. It wasn’t as severe every lap, but I did notice it starting to happen… more than once, but that one in particular was brutal. It was almost like it dumped 3000w for a second or two, not even kidding (and I can only compare that to after seeing someone cheat on ToW with sticky watts so… I do know what that looks like hah!).
here are the stats of constance from this week:
average speed: ~46.6 kph
here’s the last week constance was on tempus (feb 13):
average speed: ~40.0 kph
qed
40kph for Tempus sounds exceptionally slow. I would expect Coco to be at that speed.
…i just divided the numbers that are in the ride report published by zwift 
but more important than the actual values is the difference between the two. looking at the past few weeks, her weekly distance used to be between 6500 - 6900km. if she keeps up this pace it will be around 7800km this week.
Echoing this. I ride with Ben earlier and at times the group had to push 5 + wkg to stay with Constance on the flat.
I’ve noticed it with other slower-paced PPs too (on “flat” sections) where the PP just unexpectedly blows through the group at warp speed. It happened the other day riding with Maria on “Volcano Circuit” (but I’m sure it’s not a new phenomenon 
).
So far, it’s never resulted in me being dropped (otherwise I would probably have commented sooner) but I’m always surprised at how much I need to increase my power to stay in contact.
Absolutely - glad I wasn’t going mad! It was brutal.
On the plus side I went through 100k in 2 hrs and 9 mins… but what was supposed to be a tempo felt like a race at times
I’ve rode with pace partners for the last few days and it seems they are all off. Either your holding the same w/kg as the pace partner to keep in the group or there isn’t any draft at all, especially when in a smaller group of 2-3 with the pace partner…