Audi race cars to adopt digital 'mirror'

Audi's R18 race cars will take with them new technology into the white-hot contest of this year's Le Mans 24 Hours — but it won't be the kind of technology that wins races.

Rather, the diesel-engined cars will be fitted with a new safety feature to keep drivers posted of vehicles behind them. In production cars such a safety feature would be called a rear-vision mirror, but given the driver's view to the rear in the R18 is completely obstructed by the drivetrain it was time for Audi's brains trust to devise a new solution.

“In the past, our drivers had to strictly rely on the outside mirrors when looking rearward,” said Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, Head of Audi Motorsport, as quoted in a press release. “Yet the rear end and the rear wings, plus the vibrations that occur at high speeds, significantly limit the field of vision of these mirrors.”

A digital camera mounted behind the antennae on the roof of the car provides a video feed to an AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic semiconductors Light Emitting Diode) screen located in the cabin where a conventional mirror would normally be positioned. It's the first time such a feature has been tried in an enclosed LMP sports prototype and is already being hailed by Audi as a boon to active safety.

 “This gives us a whole host of benefits,” Dr Ullrich explained. “The operation of the mirror is weather-neutral. By contrast, when using outside mirrors, heavy water spray severely impairs the driver’s field of vision when it rains. For the new digital mirror, we worked out various day and night driving modes. Even when a rival approaches from the rear with high-beam headlights the image is superb and not just a glaring light spot.”

According to Audi, the AMOLED screen provides clearer resolution in all scenarios and improves on the old fashioned mirror. Pixels measure just 0.1 millimetres in diameter and Audi claims that the screen delivers faster response time and very high quality imaging.

“Therefore, even at 330 km/h we’re achieving a totally fluid image flow in real-time transmission,” says Dr Ullrich. The system has been tested on the road in an Audi R8, according to Dr Ullrich, and the experience gained from operating the digital mirror at race speeds is being relayed back to Audi's TE (Technische Entwicklung: Technical Development) department, with the expectation it will find its way into production cars.

“Today, the system functions perfectly in the Audi R18 LMP race car, ” said Dr Ullrich. “I’m sure that we’ll be able to return valuable findings to our colleagues in TE. We integrated the system into the vehicle package in an extremely small space and reduced the aerodynamic effects of the camera and energy consumption to a minimum. The intensity of the demands in motorsport, such as at the Le Mans 24 Hours, will cause such a system to mature at an accelerated pace. If the digital rear-view mirror is introduced in production vehicles at a future time our consumers will yet again profit from a system that has been successfully tested in motorsport as well.”

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