Volkswagen Tests Self-Driving Cars On Hamburg City Streets

Volkswagen plans to take its self-driving cars into city traffic.

As a first for the carmaker, Volkswagen Group Research has started testing autonomous vehicles in urban traffic in the major German city of Hamburg.

A fleet of five e-Golf vehicles with laser scanners, cameras, ultrasonic sensors and radars, will drive on a two-mile section of the digital test bed for automated and connected driving in the city.

The test vehicles each contain 11 laser scanners, seven radars and 14 cameras. During every minute of testing, up to five gigabytes of data are communicated, with computing power of 15 laptops in the car trunk, according to the company. The artificial intelligence being used includes deep learning, neural networks and pattern recognition, which aims to register all relevant objects and respond to them without false alarms.

“The tests center on technical possibilities as well as urban infrastructure requirements,” stated Axel Heinrich, head of Volkswagen Group Research.  “In order to make driving even safer and more comfortable in future, vehicles not only have to become autonomous and more intelligent, cities must also provide a digital ecosystem that enables vehicles to communicate with traffic lights and traffic management systems as well as with one another.”

The test results are to be incorporated in the group’s numerous research projects on autonomous driving.

1 comment about "Volkswagen Tests Self-Driving Cars On Hamburg City Streets".
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  1. R MARK REASBECK from www.USAonly.US , April 4, 2019 at 9:55 p.m.

    Oh this one's going to be fun!!
    "The test vehicles each contain 11 laser scanners, seven radars and 14 cameras. During every minute of testing, up to five gigabytes of data are communicated, with computing power of 15 laptops in the car trunk".

    Kinda shoots a giant hole in the survey from yesterday that said people would not not pay more than $2000 for the self driving technology  .  Any reasonable thinking person knows this is just stupid.  11 lasers, 7 radars, 14 cameras and 15 lap tops.....yep, looks like $2 grand to me...............NOT.  So when a piece of tire tread knocks out a laser, camera or radar how does that 5 gigs not get disrupted??

    The 737 crash planes have a MCAS system and the Nigerian pilots attempted 4 times to get it disconnectd and it failed with 157 dying ....................

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47812225

    Give me a feakin' "Brake" on any major freeway in America, this will run without a glitch?  Oh Contrar, it would be mass chaos on the freeways when these systems go down.

    "In order to make driving even safer and more comfortable in future, vehicles not only have to become autonomous and more intelligent, cities must also provide a digital ecosystem that enables vehicles to communicate with traffic lights and traffic management systems as well as with one another.”

    Another overpaid marketing feel-good corporate mouth-piece.   My guess has been the Auto-tonomous Ghost Buster Helmet equipment will add $17-22,000 per car.  And so we have a caveat, that the cities, counties, and federal highways are supposed get "on board" with technology to sync with the cars ......for what????  SO THEY DON'T HAVE TO DRIVE THE CAR.

    No, Mr heinrich, it's not the cars that need more intelligence............
    Anybody else see how stupid this is..................D. B.A.   Dead Before Arrival !!!

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