Audi's next A8 will drive itself

Outsold by the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the BMW 7 Series, Audi is countering slow A8 sales by making the next generation drive itself out of showrooms.

Due on sale in Europe next year, the fourth-generation A8 will deliver Audi’s version of what it calls 'piloted' driving technology that will allow drivers to sit back and relax while the car does the work.

Much of the technology behind the A8’s piloted driving system have made their public debut in the h-tron quattro concept, including its newly developed video camera, laser scanner and radar and ultrasonic sensors.

The technology will let the A8 drive itself from a standing start up to 60km/h and it will park itself, too, whether the driver is in the car or not. At least, it will in countries where legislation permits it (Australia is not yet one of them, which is why the same feature in BMW's new 7 Series is disabled here).

It will also replicate the current A6, A7 and A8 by letting drivers take their hands off the wheel at highway speeds for short periods before alerting them to retake control.

While that doesn’t seem like it’s offering so much more than the current Audi models, the key is that it’s pre-engineered for the day when autonomous driving becomes legal, accepted and widespread.

One big step is the introduction of separate control units, separated and sited in different parts of the car, which will become a core Audi piloted-driving architecture and will be rolled out in most of its medium-to-large future models.

A digital driver (dubbed the Central Driver Assistance System, or its German abbreviation zFAS) takes all the information pumped in by all of the car’s sensors, new and old, and builds a complete model of the car’s surroundings in real time.

It then sends this model back to the car’s piloted driving systems, including the throttle, steering, brakes, indicators, lights and transmission, so the car can move itself around and give the driver the day off.

The core part of the modeling comes from the laser scanner, which reaches 80 metres ahead of the h-tron quattro concept (and, in time, the A8) and feeds it back into the tablet PC-sized zFAS, which alone has more computing power than the Audi A4.

The result is a car that can brake, accelerate and steer itself at most urban speeds and in highway traffic jams. It will also be able to park itself via the key fob or a smartphone app, without any other input from the driver.