Audi A8 at Berlinale film festival shows off autonomous driving tech

Audi has been working on autonomous driving technology for years and it recently showed off its capabilities at the Berlinale film festival with an autonomous A8 chauffeuring movie star Daniel Brühl.

The autonomous A8 picked up the actor and his girlfriend Felicitas Rombold from their hotel in Berlin and drove them directly to the Berlinale Palast.

As Dr. Ing. Stefan Knirsch, Audi Board Member for Technical Development puts it, the company is now looking to prove its capabilities in the consumer autonomous car segment by showing off the capabilities of its autonomous driving platform as it cruises through the busy urban traffic. The milestone is huge considering that the automaker has already proved the capabilities of its platform on the race track and express way.

Using prominent architectural objects along the driving route, the platform makes decision about orientation and compares the information with a precise map. In turn, the Audi A8 L W12 synchronizes this information with data from its own calculation of its movements. This comparison enables the piloted VIP shuttle to drive safely.

Audi has been busy testing out autonomous driving technologies for years now and it was in 2009 when it first carried out tests at a salt lake in the USA. One year later, an Audi TTS conquered Pikes Peak in the Rocky Mountains without a driver. In 2013, Audi test platforms performed piloted driving for the first time on public roads in Nevada.

In the same year, the brand demonstrated piloted parking – the driver exited a car at the entrance to a parking garage, and the car parked itself autonomously. Later, the driver ordered the car back to the garage exit with a smartphone app.

Demonstrating just how dynamic piloted driving can be, an Audi RS 7 Sportback drove a lap at race pace on the grand prix race track in Hockenheim in October 2014. In the next year, Audi sent piloted test platforms onto public roads near the CES and CES Asia consumer electronics trade shows – from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas and in the urban traffic of Shanghai. In October 2015, engineers demonstrated automatic emergency evasive maneuvers in a test vehicle with moving obstacles in the urban environment.

The systems can make a valuable contribution toward safety in the future, especially when the driver is overwhelmed or underwhelmed by driving tasks. When used to temporarily assume driving tasks, the predictive technology makes driving more efficient, reduces stress and enhances comfort. In addition, it gives the driver greater freedom to organize his time in the car.