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| The rapid rise of self drive cars will make this type of driving a lot safer. |
BMW and Continental have teamed up to develop an “electronic
co-pilot” for cars.
Scheduled to run to the end of 2014, the goal of the joint project
will be to develop a number of prototype vehicles capable of highly automated
freeway driving on European freeways from 2020, with fully automated systems
expected from 2025.
The next test phase for prototype vehicles involves testing them —
with trained drivers behind the wheel — in typical driving conditions that will
include intersections, toll stations, roadworks and national borders.
Both BMW and Continental have already logged thousands of
kilometres using semi-autonomous systems. Continental worked with Mercedes on
adaptive cruise control and emergency braking assistance systems. It also
participated in the EU research project called HAVEit, where it was responsible
for developing a highly automated assist system for driving around traffic jams
and roadworks.
Like Google and Audi, Continental also took one of its self-driving
car testbeds to Nevada in early 2012, where it became the first automotive
components supplier to receive Nevada DMV permission to test on public roads and
recorded over 24 000 km of highly automated driving.
BMW famously demonstrated its BMW TrackTrainer on the world’s most
popular car programme Top Gear, The self-driving BMW track car
uses high-resolution GPS and video data to navigate around race tracks fully
autonomously, and the Emergency Stop Assistant, which has some novel attributes,
including monitoring the driver for incapacitation.
If the vehicle senses through biosensors that the driver is having
a medical emergency, such as a heart attack, then it will take over operation
and bring the vehicle to a safe stop on the side of the road and call for
help.
In mid-2011, BMW also tested a self-driving car on the A9 Motorway
between Munich and Nuremberg, where the car mixed in with traffic and obeyed the
traffic laws.
The BMW test vehicle was equipped with 360-degree LIDAR (laser
radar), radar, sonar, and computer vision systems using cameras to detect other
cars and monitor traffic.
In comparison to the Google self-driving car, which sports a large
spinning LIDAR unit on its roof, the autonomous BMW appears much like a standard
model.
By concentrating on automated freeway driving, the companies hope
to make the technology safe, attractive and affordable for customers. However,
they anticipate autonomous driving technologies will be rolled out in stages,
with partially automated driving possible from 2016, highly autonomous systems
available from 2020, and fully autonomous systems appearing in vehicles from
2025.
