Autonomous Audi RS7 completes Hockenheim trial

An autonomous Audi RS 7 concept car has completed a lap on the Grand Prix track in Hockenheim in a little over two minutes.

‘The top performance by the Audi RS 7…substantiates the skills of our development team with regard to piloted driving at Audi,’ said Prof Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, board member for Technical Development at AUDI. ‘The derivations from series production, particularly in terms of precision and performance, are of great value for our further development steps.’

According to Audi, the car orientated itself on the track via GPS, with data transmitted to the vehicle via WiFi and redundantly via high-frequency radio.
In parallel to this, 3D cameras in the car film the track, and a computer program compares the cameras’ image information against a data set stored on board.
The piloted system, which reached up to 240km/h at Hockenheim, is being developed in partnership with Volkswagen Group Research, the Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) and Stanford University.
More on Audi’s piloted driving concept can be found here .