Moment of glory in Hockenheim
Company press release.
Ingolstadt, October 22, 2014
The Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept car is on the pole position. Its developers have dubbed it Bobby. Behind the wheel: no one. The Grand Prix circuit in Hockenheim awaits. The last race of the season for the DTM cars will be starting in just about one hour. The Audi RS 5 DTM race cars will be starting from the first three positions. But Bobby is up first. With soccer World Champion and FC Bayern star Bastian Schweinsteiger in the passenger seat, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, Audi Board Member for Technical Development, drives the car to the starting line and gets out. Now there is no one behind the wheel. Schweinsteiger waves the green flag. Three. Two. One. Go!
Standing at the edge of the race track: the ten-member development team under project manager Peter Bergmiller. The eyes of the engineers are locked on the Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept car. Months of development and testing are behind them. The engineers have studied piloted driving at the limits in several thousand test kilometers. Now the moment of truth is here – for the team and the pioneer of technology.
'We want to show how safely and highly precise – down to the centimeter – our latest driverless systems work,' said Bergmiller about the goal of the demonstration. 'That becomes most apparent when we take it to the physical limits. And where better to do that then on a race track?'
The Audi RS 7 piloted concept car displays top performance on the 4,574 kilometer (2.8 mi) Hockenheim circuit. The 560 hp technology platform accelerates full-throttle down the six straights and brakes precisely before the 17 corners. Bobby follows the ideal line with precise turn-in and perfectly metered use of the throttle. Deceleration forces when braking reach 1.3 g; lateral acceleration in the corners is as high as 1.1 g.
The Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept will be turning into the home stretch in just a few seconds. The RS 7 stops within a millimeter of the spot from which it started. The latest technical innovation from Audi delivered a convincing performance. The technicians visibly relax, and pride spreads across their faces. The developers' summary: 'We wanted to come close to matching the speed, precision and vehicle control of a professional racer. We took the sportiest piloted driving car in the world to the race track and did just that,' said Bergmiller.
The technology behind this success is specially corrected GPS signals. They provide for the car's excellent ability to orient itself. Parallel to this, camera images are compared in real time against graphical information stored in the car. The comprehensive networking and highly-precise control of all driving-relevant actuators on board ensure that the car also remains under control at the limits. The developers are packing increasingly precise sensors and ever-greater electronic intelligence into the new models, thus enabling the car to orient itself and make decisions autonomously. In a way the car becomes more human. This is particularly true when it comes to the benefits to the driver, who in the near future will be able to experience the first piloted functions in an Audi. The goal here is not to drive as fast as possible, but rather to drive safely and avoid accidents.
Bobby and his team have accomplished quite a bit on the road to this goal. The results of the tests at the physical limits flow continuously into production development. 'The insights we gained from piloted driving at the limits are worth their weight in gold for production-ready piloted systems,' explained Bergmiller. 'The race track is also the most demanding test environment for production when it comes to piloted driving.' One example from work currently underway at Audi is the development of automatic avoidance functions in critical driving situations.
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Piloted driving is one of Audi's most important development fields. The first successful developments were achieved more than ten years ago. Piloted driving on the race track debuted in 2012. A driverless Audi TTS turned a lap on the five kilometer (3.1 mi) Thunderhill Race Track north of Sacramento in under two-and-a-half minutes. Even then, the central question was how a piloted driving car behaves at high loads and under extreme conditions.
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