Hit the road Jack

Audi’s piloted driving test vehicle ‘Jack’ continues to impress.

Audi continues to make tremendous gains in its piloted driving project, with testing on the A9 autobahn demonstrating the test vehicle’s very co-operative nature dealing with other road users.

9 June, 2016

Smooth, observant, considerate and supremely competent. This sums up the extraordinary driving prowess of ‘Jack’, one of Audi’s leading lights in the development of piloted driving – a field in which Audi leads the way.

But Jack is not one of the brand’s many talented test drivers or works racing drivers – he, or rather ‘it’ is an Audi A7 Sportback test vehicle, one of the piloted driving concepts setting the standard in driverless technology, and continuing to impress with incredible leaps in ‘ability’ after exhaustive testing on Germany’s A9 autobahn.

Jack’s progress and that of Audi’s piloted driving program have been exciting to watch, with quantum leaps in the technology at the highest level and some advances already finding their way into series production in numerous driver assistance systems.

Milestones

A time traveller arriving in 2016 from as recently as a decade ago would be stunned to see cars performing driving manoeuvres so seamlessly in real traffic situations, without the driver laying a hand on the wheel, or in some cases, without a driver even being in the car!

Only two years ago, a driverless Audi RS 7 Sportback (nicknamed Bobby) did the seemingly impossible, when it completed a lap of the famed Hockenheimring at race speed and Sonoma Raceway also proved no match for the driverless Audis. And who can forget the driverless Audi TTS in 2009 etching the Audi four rings into the surface of a salt flat after setting a driverless speed record of 210km/h. Or the following year when another TTS took on the most daunting mountain road on earth – blasting up the legendary Pikes Peak, sans driver?

These number as some of the more spectacular demonstrations of the brand’s leading piloted driving technology, but the list of achievements, including driving journalists right across the US or the German Transport minister heading down the autobahn for a ‘driverless drive’ are now the stuff of automotive fact.

What once seemed fantastic and far fetched is happening – and, as Jack’s latest testing has shown, progress is moving at a tremendous rate.

Now Jack is entering a whole new driving phase, actually adapting to the traffic flow around it and interacting with other road users.

According to Audi engineers working on the project, Jack has actually learned to show consideration for other road users – something more than a few human drivers seem to have trouble with!

Overtaking larger vehicles sees Jack take a wider line to increase the safety margin, while its ability to merge with other road users – deciding whether to accelerate or brake, depending on the best scenario for smooth traffic flow – would put many a Sydney motorist on a Friday night to shame.

The nerve centre

The technology is based around the central driver assistance controller, or zFAS, which uses the very latest high-performance processors to evaluate the signals from all sensors in real-time and create a model of the car’s surroundings. This model represents the prevailing traffic situation as accurately as possible and allows the zFAS to plan for what lies ahead and calculate upcoming manoeuvres in advance.

The navigation system has also been updated to the point that it can now compute a route with the largest proportion of piloted driving sections to give the driver the greatest chance to relax and enjoy the ride.

Of course there is a great deal to do to see piloted driving become an everyday technology, and this requires networking between vehicles and their surrounding infrastructure to ensure smooth, problem-free traffic flow.

Audi’s digital test site on the A9 autobahn (an officially recognised test area) offers ideal conditions for evaluating and developing future functions and concepts, where the brand can explore the technical possibilities of Car-to-X communication for example, under real road conditions and in real time.

Future motion

In the future, information on variable-message traffic signs, for example, will be digitally transmitted into the car to further help with traffic flow, as well as Car-to-Car communication between vehicles that are traveling on the same routes – allowing vehicles to alert one another of hazards and accidents ahead.

In addition to sensors in the car, signals from the environment give the driver a precise preview of the road ahead. Audi’s partners for the digital test site on the A9 autobahn, are testing the internal composition and modified material structure of roadside posts. These are to be designed to reflect the radar sensors of cars from greater distances. Effectively giving the car the ‘heads up’ well in advance.

Audi is also working with the city of Ingolstadt (its home base) on incorporating sensors – which can be read by vehicles – into footpaths and road signs to help piloted vehicles recognise their surrounds and navigate accordingly.

All of this talk of designing road systems to ‘talk to cars’ may seem well in the future, but so too did the idea of an unmanned car blasting up the twisting dirt road of Pikes Peak – and that’s already been crossed off the list. Audi plans to have piloted vehicles on the road in Ingolstadt by 2018, while car to X technology is already being employed in major cities such as Berlin, where traffic lights communicate with the Audi’s on-board software to give the driver the optimal speed required to reach the next light as they go green (without speeding of course).

Closer to home, production car technologies such as Audi Traffic Jam Assist – where the vehicle can steer in gridlock traffic at speeds of up to 65km/h – is already available in the Audi A4 and Audi Q7.

The future then, has arrived, and while it will be some time yet before we see the likes of Jack on our roads, the systems being developed will continue to find their way into production vehicles, as the cities of today race to catch up and prepare for tomorrow.

Hit the road Jack

Audi’s piloted driving test vehicle ‘Jack’ continues to impress.

Milestones

The nerve centre

Future motion

The Audi difference

The speed of light

Living electric

Membrane mining