BMW is moving by leaps and bounds in the highly-automated vehicle project, having just completed nearly 5,000 kilometres of highway testing with a technologically-advanced 5-Series sedan that can accelerate, pass and even adapt to road conditions on its own.
Using lasers, radars, ultrasonic devices, cameras and GPS data, the car knows exactly which road and lane it's driving on, anticipates future actions, and detects vehicles or objects in front, at the sides or the rear.
So far, one of the biggest challenges in the project involved reacting to vehicles merging on to the highway at exit and access points. This is now possible up to a speed of 130 km/h, but in compliance with current traffic regulations regarding speed limits and such things as prohibited passing zones.
Research will continue in order to develop innovative assistance functions for future BMW models, including the i3. Since the latter is primarily designed as an urban vehicle, it benefits from systems that make parking easier and driving in congested traffic less stressful.
One of them is the Traffic Jam Assistant, which allows drivers to navigate effortlessly in congested areas (as long as they keep one hand on the steering wheel), maintaining a safe distance between vehicles, controlling the speed and steering, and keeping the car precisely in its lane at speeds up to 40 km/h.
The first test results are encouraging, but there's still a long way to go.
The next thing BMW wants to teach its prototype is how to deal with road construction sites, which represent a big challenge because they take on all kinds of forms, making detection, localization and determining the right vehicle response quite difficult.
While advancing development of the technology for road use, BMW engineers are also busy with the TrackTrainer, which supports autonomous driving on competition race courses and has already made its mark on the legendary North Loop of the Nürburgring and the Laguna Seca Raceway in California.
With Google working on a similar project and BMW making major strides, the days where we can let our cars drive us seem closer than ever.
