HANDS-FREE AT ALMOST 150MPH - AUDI RS 7 SPORTBACK WILL LAP HOCKENHEIM AUTONOMOUSLY

At Germany's Touring Car race finale at Hockenheim Audi will stage one of the most extreme piloted driving demonstrations to date

• Audi to underscore piloted driving potential as part of the programme for the final German Touring Car Championship race at Hockenheim
• Live broadcast on Audi Media TV from 12:45pm on October 19, 2014
• Two-minute lap time and up to 149mph expected

A driverless Audi RS 7 Sportback will tackle Germany's Hockenheim circuit at race speed next week to underscore the potential of piloted driving technology. With the latest Audi developments on board, the concept car will drive autonomously to its physical limits with millimetre precision as an exciting sideshow for the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) finale on October 19.

As its sophisticated sensors guide it around the challenging circuit, the RS 7 Sportback piloted driving concept car will be approximately as fast as with a professional racing driver at the wheel. Tests conducted so far indicate that on the grand prix track a lap time of just over two minutes can be expected, and that the technology demonstrator should reach speeds of up to 149mph.

The performance will be broadcast live and exclusively on the Internet on October 19 starting at 12:45 pm on Audi MediaTV. More information will be available from Tuesday, October 14, at 2:00 p.m. here.

 

Should be interesting.

 

Thanks for posting Paul. I'm going and was unaware of this.

Interesting.

 

Suspect they've actually "programmed" the straights, corners, inclines etc but will still be good to see.

 

The lap time for a DTM around Hockenheim is c 1:34

I'd love to see this - although there's probably very little to see.

Interesting, but a car driving on a track is much easier to achieve than driving on a road. It doesn't have tor react to much.

Ok this is still very fast though.

 

http://www.cnet.com/videos/bmw-hits-the-performance-limits-with-its-driverless-car/

 

Why has it got the wipers going when there's nobody in it ? 

Why has it got the wipers going when there's nobody in it ? 

 

So the cameras can see where they are going!!!

Of course, silly me.

So it did happen then, although their website crashed due to demand - here are the highlights below. I still suspect that the car has been programmed to drive the course as opposed to it actually sensing the road and driving accordingly as per a Google car, impressive nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

There is a full length version available too:

 

I think I have already seen something like that before:

Both cars rely on satellite navigation (which is not very cool). So what's the difference? As to the BMW, at least they say it is able to "learn".

Government press release....

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-fast-tracks-driverless-cars

This is nothing new.

 

There are millions of Audis on Britain's roads, and most of them are already being driven without any biological intelligence at all.