“Recording, processing and interpreting highly complex traffic situations is the key to safe automated and autonomous driving. This is particularly demanding in dense urban traffic. This is why we are deliberately testing our automated driving functions in everyday driving situations in large cities”, says Olaֲ Kֳ₪llenius, Member of the Board of Management of Daimlerֲ AG responsible for Group Researchֲ & Mercedes-Benz Cars Development.ֲ “In this way not only do our vehicles become more intelligent, they also become safer.”
New technologies need legal certainty
In addition, the Stuttgart-based automotive company is an advocate of an internationally harmonised legal framework for automated and autonomous driving. There is a need for action especially in relation to international agreements on road traffic law, which set the binding framework for national legislation and which currently still compulsorily require a driver. Further changes are also important with regard to vehicle certification as well as data storage.
“Progress must not stop at national borders. Legislation must keep pace with technological development. Otherwise it will not be possible for important innovations in automated and autonomous driving to hit the road,” says Renata Jungo Brֳ¼ngger, Member of the Board of Management of Daimlerֲ AG, responsible for Integrity and Legal Affairs. “Legal certainty is essential for the acceptance of autonomous driving in society. So we quickly need further international harmonisation of the legal framework.”
Autonomous driving is one of the four strategic areas for the future which form an integral part of the corporate strategy of Daimler AG under the acronym CASE. CASE “these letters are shaping the future of mobility. They stand for Connected, Autonomous, Sharedֲ & Services and Electric. The aim is to provide intuitive mobility for customers by intelligently intermeshing all four CASE areas.
“Intelligent World Drive” ג€“ each continent with different test focuses
While the main area of interest in Germany is specific driving behaviours on motorways and in traffic jams, the focus of the test drive in China is on driving behaviour in the dense traffic of Shanghai with its millions of inhabitants. On a drive from Sydney to Melbourne, the developers in Australia will test the latest, digital maps from HERE. Also in the Cape Town area in South Africa, the focus is on testing the available maps in everyday use as well as on country-specific peculiarities. The test drive in the Los Angeles area and afterwards on to Las Vegas will concentrate on an evaluation of driving behaviour in dense urban traffic and traffic jams as well as traffic overtaking on the right on highways.
DIGITAL LIGHT ג€“ testing the innovative lighting system
As lighting also plays a key role on the road to automated and autonomous mobility, Mercedes-Benz’s “Intelligent World Drive” is additionally testing a prototype headlamp featuring innovative DIGITAL LIGHT technology. This revolutionary lighting system allows features that were unveiled as a vision of the future in the Fֲ 015 Luxury in Motion research vehicle in early 2015. The non-dazzle continuous high beam in HD quality uses chips with over one million micro-mirrors, and therefore pixels, per headlamp. Among other things, DIGITAL LIGHT is thus able to project light corridors onto the road in order to communicate with the surroundings.