The engineering team at Audi has been working with automated driving for some time now, as it believes it is the future of automobiles. Feeding their competitive racing desires with autonomous driving started with an Audi TTS on the salt flats of Utah in 2009. Five years ago a driverless TTS set a world speed record for self-driving cars on the Bonneville flats at 130 mph. Its victory lap carved out the pattern of Audi’s iconic four rings in the salt as a boisterous display of its dominance.
One year later, the piloted TTS nicknamed “Shelley” climbed the infamous 12.42 mile, 156 bend Pikes Peak hill-climb in an impressive time of 27 minutes. Fitted with ultra-precise GPS, Audi claims to have finished the climb while departing only 2 centimeters from the vehicle’s defined course.
Once again Audi was eager to show off its cutting edge technology as it revealed its new RS7 piloted driving concept vehicle. As with the TTS, a standard reveal was not acceptable. It had to be something extravagant. That extravagance was realized with an automated lap of Frankfurt, Germany’s Hockenheimring at racing speeds almost two weeks ago, after the DTM (Germany’s touring car championship) finale. But first, the car.
This 560 hp beast, capable of 240 kph and 1.1 lateral g’s, was a standard production RS7 sportback fitted with diverless technology by Audi’s engineering team. There are two main ways the RS7, nicknamed “Bobby”, was able to read the road. One was an ultra-sensitive GPS attached to the roof of the car to keep track of exact position. The other was a serial camera mounted towards the front of the car that is able to gather all the surroundings. Audi claims that the combined technology allows Bobby to drive to its physical limits with millimeter precision. That millimeter precision was seen when Bobby was let loose at the Hockenheimring once the DTM finale had ended.
The 21 minute video attached below shows a brief description of the car before watching it take its automated lap. The lap is exquisite and beautifully precise. At racing speeds, the RS7 is seen ripping through the track. Though no lap time was stated, a press release from Audi a week prior to the event projected a time of just over two minutes. That is fast! Not only the fasted automated lap but possibly faster than the current four door record holder, a BMW M3, that completed a lap in 2007 at 2:02.71.
Once again Audi has displayed it dominance in the piloted vehicle sector, but this display was not just to show off. Audi claims that exercises like this are done to create and test similar technologies that are going to eventually be put into production vehicles. These systems include Traffic Jam Pilot and Audi’s Piloted Parking system.
The former, Traffic Jam Pilot, is a new technology developed by Audi for, as the name suggests, traffic jams. At speeds under 37 mph, sensors and lasers scanning up to 80 meters detects traffic movement in the vehicles ahead. Taking complete control of the car, the Traffic Jam Pilot can accelerate and break with the movement of traffic until reaching a speed of 37 mph in which the system will disengage, allowing the driver to take control of the vehicle. The mundane task of driving in traffic often leads to frustration, anger, and small or large accidents. The use of Traffic Jam Pilot can eliminate this risks leaving the driver more refreshed and aware.
The second technology mentioned, Piloted Parking, is different than most self-parking systems. This new system enables the car to park without the driver even in the car. Using the same serial camera and sensors, the car is able to identify and park itself into a spot while the “driver” just watches from outside the vehicle.
With the engineering team at Audi developing cutting edge automated driver technologies, it’s no wonder they are so bold in their boisterous display of extravagance. If you have the tech to back it up then why not!
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