Audi steps towards 'uncrashable' car

The next generation Audi A8 limousine due to be unveiled next later this year will apply the brakes for you if it senses a crash is imminent. However, unlike the Volvo City Safety system which automatically slams on the brakes below 30km/h to avoid bumps in low-speed traffic, the Audi system will also bring the car to a halt from freeway speeds.

The new technology is the next step in Audi's radar cruise control system.

Currently, all new Audis equipped with radar cruise control abruptly jolt the brakes if the system senses the driver has not noticed that he or she is driving too close to the car in front. First, there's an audible warning and if then the driver doesn't react, the system will jab the brakes momentarily to get your attention.

That's all that is about to change, however, and Audi has developed autonomous braking technology to the next level.

Audi's head of driver assistance systems, Frank van Meel, says its next generation radar will work across a greater variety of conditions than the Volvo system.

Van Meel told the Carsales Network: "The City Safety system that Volvo uses is more or less a low-speed insurance system, whereas we are talking about safety systems that are trying to prevent severe injuries at higher speeds. At speeds below 30km/h you generally don't have severe injuries.

"Our system works over the whole speed range, depending on the severity of the situation."

Audi says its radar system will not take full control away from the driver, but that day could come.

"We are going step by step to complete crash avoidance. The first step was radar cruise control, the second step was braking guard [the existing system where the brakes are jabbed to catch the driver's attention], and the third step will come very soon with full stop braking across all speeds, including freeway speeds," van Meel explained.

Van Meel did not say which Audi model the new technology would appear on, however, such ground-breaking inventions tend to appear on flagship models first as the technology is so expensive. And Audi has a new A8 limousine due to debut later this year

The Audi system will only intervene if a crash is absolutely unavoidable, van Meel said.

"We don't want to over-rule the driver, we want to assist the driver. So we give the driver all the warnings and if he or she does not react and it's impossible to avoid the accident then we will go up to a full stop to take as much energy as possible out of the collision."

As clever as the system is it's still far away from complete crash avoidance, he said.

"For complete crash avoidance we need to look outside the car, and communicate with the environment."

Van meel said the radar braking system was reliable in testing, but admitted there were challenges when fine-tuning its sensitivity.

"It's not difficult to have a system that works effectively," he said. "The difficulty is to not have the car apply the brakes sharply if there is not an emergency.
That is the biggest challenge."

He said the biggest triggers were metal objects that weren't cars or obstacles.

"Radar technology is a military technology. It reacts to all metal: traffic signs, road signs, and it doesn't distinguish the size of an object, it just detects that somewhere in its field there is metal.

"If something is exactly in your lane or in another lane, you need very sophisticated algorithms to make sure you don't get a false alarm."

The safety expert is, however, confident of the reliability of the new system and said radar was more reliable than laser based systems.

"We have 8 years experience with radar cruise control. Radar has the advantage that it always works, no matter if it rains, snows -- whatever the conditions, it looks through everything. That is also why it is military technology. It can always see. A laser's performance is decreased by rain or bad weather, low standing sun," he said.

So, if you combine radar cruise control with Audi's infrastructure communication will Audi ever be able take the driver out of the car?

"We call them driver assist systems because they assist the driver, never over-rule the driver. We never take away what the driver is intending to do.

"However, a lot of people wish they could have their car drive them home after a night out, just push the button and away they go. But this is a long, long way from happening because of the time it will take to get infrastructure in place."

Van Meel said as far as being transported by auto-pilot, we are no further advanced than the horse and cart era.

"A hundred years ago when we travelled by horse and cart, the driver could fall asleep and the horse would find its way home without crashing. We are not even at that point."

Not that van Meel is suggesting we should go back to riding horses.

"We would like to do much more than that but we are not even where we were 100 years ago. We are making small steps and we're doing everything we can with the car, but for the next step in road safety we must look outside the car at infrastructure. And that requires government assistance."

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