Audi piloted driving concept completes lap at racing speed

Audi scored yet another major success in the development of piloted driving. Before the season finale of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM), the latest technology concept - the Audi RS7 piloted driving concept - was running up to its physical limit without a driver.

It took the Audi RS7 piloted driving concept just slightly over two minutes to complete a lap on the Grand Prix track in Hockenheim - piloted with high precision and accuracy to within centimetres.

For orientation on the track, the car uses specially corrected GPS signals. This GPS data is transmitted to the vehicle via WiFi according to the automotive standard 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.

Audi claims that piloted driving is one of its most important development fields and the first successful developments were achieved ten years ago. The latest test runs at the physical limit are providing the Audi engineers with insights for the development of, for example, automatic avoidance functions in critical driving situations.