Steering was yesterday

Steering was yesterday

Anyone spending their summer vacation in Sweden this year has a good chance of encountering a “ghost car”. But don't worry: In contrast to the notorious wrong-way driver - a mostly confused driver who has taken the wrong motorway exit - the Volvos controlled by electronic autopilots adhere to the prevailing traffic rules even better than any flesh-and-blood driver. 100 prototypes based on the Volvo S60 are currently in everyday traffic around the Swedish metropolis of Gothenburg as part of the ambitious “Drive Me” project. They can independently stay in the correct lane, adapt their speed to the speed limits and merge into rolling traffic without the driver having to intervene. Both the Gothenburg city government and the Swedish transport authorities support this globally unique pilot project, and in 2017 Volvo plans to deliver the first autonomous vehicles based on its XC90 SUV model to customers.

Drive and feel

Ghost cars were also a hotly debated topic at this year's Vienna Engine Symposium, as incapacitating the driver through an autopilot offers the great opportunity to drastically reduce both the fuel consumption and the exhaust emissions of combustion engines. Consumption drivers such as uncontrollable accelerator footing or upshifting too late can be switched off, as can the socially undesirable behaviors of cavalier starting, jostling or sneaking in the fast lane. “Almost all vehicle manufacturers are now working on autonomous or at least semi-autonomous driving,” explains Robert Fischer, Managing Director of Engineering and Technology at AVL List. The Graz testing technology company is also heavily involved in the development. The AVL “Drive” software enables car manufacturers to design not only the technical framework but also the experience of moving around in a ghost car by transforming the passengers’ feeling, hearing and seeing into metrics. “Ultimately, an important development goal is to give the occupants of an autonomous vehicle a pleasant and safe feeling,” says Robert Fischer.  

Hype and reality

A few weeks ago, an image of an egg-shaped two-seater with a camera tower mounted on the roof hit the internet. Technology group Google presented its prototype of an autonomous vehicle that has neither a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, nor brake. The driver only has three buttons available for the simplest control commands: start, park and emergency stop. The maximum speed of the test vehicle is limited to 40 km/h; a rotating 360-degree laser on the roof, together with other position and orientation sensors, continuously scans the surroundings. Christopher Urmson, project manager at Google, announced a field test with 100 self-driving test cars in a blog post. In his opinion, the computer-controlled vehicles are safer than human-driven cars because they do not have the problem of blind spots, fatigue or distraction. According to Urmson, a market-ready version of the self-driving car that Google is developing together with industry partners will take several years to arrive.

Peter Seipel: Autonomously in the workshop

The easier and safer driving becomes for drivers and passengers, the more complex the technical systems that control the vehicles on the fastest route from A to B naturally become. The workshops have to constantly familiarize themselves with new components that need to be regularly checked, maintained and, if necessary, replaced. At the Bosch technology group, for example, around 5,000 engineers work on the development of safety and assistance systems that make automated driving possible. And supplier TRW is currently developing the next generation of video cameras and radar sensors that can reliably detect both fixed and moving obstacles and provide the necessary information to the electronic assistants for lane keeping, lane changing and distance and speed control. The workshops will be happy because the degree of complexity of a vehicle increases the associated repair costs. But apart from all sober market considerations, the declared goal of the new vehicle autonomy is a completely honorable one: by 2020 at the latest, traffic accidents with injuries and fatalities should finally be a thing of the past.