Audi was the first auto maker to be involved in a consumer electronics show (CES) in Las Vegas six years ago. CES is a show for the technology hungry world and has been the mecca for tech-junkies the world over as year after year the latest gaming, mobile devices, computers and even household items are previewed to consumers.
This year, 2015, for the first time ever, CES comes to Asia and Shanghai is the city of choice. The 35-million inhabitants of Shanghai who are mostly tech-hungry Chinese will have first hand information of the latest devices, hardware and software that will mostly be coming from China itself as most technology giants are working out of China in recent times.
German car manufacturer Audi is taking a big stand forward in producing its next generation of vehicles with the highest level of technology to provide drivers with the best and most up-to-date levels of connectivity. This connectivity starts with the Internet on the go and moves right along to in-car systems, entertainment and autonomous driving. We saw possibilities of the technology first in the Hollywood movie I-Robot where actor Will Smith was ‘driven’ in the Audi RS Q around the city until he decided to take full control of the vehicle to chase down some criminals. In full control of the RS Q, Will Smith crashed the car. Human error, high emotion and a lack of focus on the road, the Audi autonomous car will remove all these issues and have the driver safely reach their destination.
Yes, Audi wants drivers in mega cities like Shanghai to maximise their daily time where instead of sitting behind the wheel of a car stressed out in heavy traffic for 2-3 hours a day, drivers becomes passengers in their own cars that will drive themselves to their destination while the driver sits back and reads his morning news, answers and replies his emails and even catch a quick morning tele-conference.
Audi has long been a driving force in the area of highly automated driving. The brand’s development efforts have produced a number of spectacular feats. In 2010, for instance, a driverless Audi TTS conquered the legendary Pikes Peak mountain race circuit in Colorado, USA
Audi has time and again showcased the potential of the technology with demonstrations at the limit. With 560 hp and a top speed of 305 km/h (189.5 mph), the Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept car exemplifies Vorsprung durch Technik.
The Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept car is a technology platform with which Audi is exploring the possibilities of piloted driving at its most dynamic. There are two primary technological considerations during piloted driving at the physical limit: the highly precise orientation of the vehicle on the road and absolute control of the vehicle at the handling limits.
The technology platform uses specially corrected GPS signals for orientation on the route. Accurate down to a centimeter, these differential GPS data are transmitted to the vehicle via WLAN according to the automotive standard and redundantly via high-frequency radio. Parallel to this, 3D camera images are compared in real time against graphical information stored on board. The system searches in each of the countless individual images for several hundred known features, such as building patterns behind the road, which it then uses as additional positioning information.
Control of the vehicle at the handling limits is another outstanding feature of the Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept car. Comprehensive on-board networking coupled with the highly precise control of all actors relevant to driving enable the technology platform to drive at the physical limits. The Audi engineers intensively investigated piloted driving at the handling limits, putting the technology platform through several thousand test kilometers on a variety of routes.
To demonstrate its capabilities, the Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept car drove itself a clean racing line at the Hockenheimring with full throttle on the straights, full braking before the corners, precise turn-in and perfectly metered acceleration when exiting the corners. Forces of over 1.3 g occur during braking, and lateral acceleration in the corners can reach 1.1 g. Tests on the track in Hockenheim saw an expected top speed of 240 km/h (149.1 mph) and a lap time of 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
The race track is also the most demanding test bed for production when it comes to piloted driving. The future systems must also work extremely precisely and with zero errors in critical situations. They therefore must be capable of properly assessing the current situation even at the physical limit. This test bed provides the Audi engineers with a variety of insights for production development, such as for the development of automatic avoidance functions in critical driving situations.
