Autonomous Car Driving practical

Tesla's driver assistance systems are not without controversy in the automotive industry. This is in no way due to the fact that one does not appreciate the technological advances madea by the electric car pioneer. Rather, it is about marketing under the name Autopilot. From the point of view of many critics, this suggests that a human driver is no longer needed. In fact, the Tesla website says: The current autopilot functions require active monitoring by the driver - autonomous operation of the vehicle is therefore not possible. Alois Knoll, Professor of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-Time Systems at the TU Munich therefore warns against too much optimism when it comes to self-driving cars: The development of autonomous driving is not a triviality. Instead, he speaks of the most complex machines  that we have ever rolled out as mass-produced goods.

Three major problem areas have to be solved

Because there are various difficulties to be overcome in the development of the technology.

1. First of all, it not only has to work in principle, but anytime and anywhere. So it is not enough if the automatic brake assistant works 99 percent of the time. Because with the amount of kilometers driven, this would lead to a potentially serious crash very quickly. The human driver can therefore only be dispensed with when there is almost one hundred percent safety.

2. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the cars have to move in a complex and changing traffic situation. In other words: the self-driving car must also take into account the behavior of other road users.

3. And finally ethical questions have to be clarified: How should the software react when it notices that an accident is inevitable?

The researchers are switching from the motorway to the city center

In order to advance the technology despite these difficulties, the research project Providentia  has been running at the Technical University of Munich for several years. So far, the A9 north of Munich has served as a test field. There, the researchers worked with cameras, radars, lidar lasers and other sensors to see how the respective traffic situation can best be recorded in real time. The exchange of information between the vehicles was also tested. In this way, it could be possible in the future for cars to look into the future by using the data of cars in front. Now the researchers will also go one step further and switch from the motorway to the city center. An intersection in Munich Garching serves as the test laboratory. The focus will be primarily on the behavior of other road users - especially pedestrians. The goal of basic research: to come a little closer to the dream of the autonomous car.