At Audi, piloted driving means safe, comfortable driving in partnership. Keeping this in mind, the company has been actively involved in the Ko-HAF research initiative, which develops standards and solutions for cooperative highly-automated driving. Audi is set to introduce piloted driving in the next generation of the Audi A8.
Audi is participating in the “Cooperative Highly-Automated Driving” initiative (Ko-HAF). The aim of Ko-HAF is to develop standards and technologies that enable cooperative driving between highly-automated vehicles in everyday road traffic. The project work covers various subject areas from computer simulations to test drives on closed sites and later on public roads. In addition to Audi, other German car manufacturers, suppliers and universities are involved in the project. The initiative is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy.
For years, Audi has been carrying out pioneering work in the area of piloted driving. As a result of this, a driverless Audi RS 7 completed a circuit of the Grand Prix track in Hockenheim at race speed in October 2014. In July 2015, a further developed Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept completed a series of faster laps on the Californian Sonoma Raceway.
Audi has also recently conducted successful testing on public roads. At the beginning of 2015, an A7 piloted driving concept with a large number of series production and near-series production technologies on board drove from Stanford in Silicon Valley via Bakersfield to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. At CES Asia in May 2015, journalists also had an opportunity to experience piloted driving – in the heavy traffic of the Shanghai city highway.
The technologies for piloted driving stand for safety, partnership, time-saving, efficiency and comfort. Audi will introduce these to series production in the next generation of the A8 luxury-class sedan. In the first phase, the new systems will be able to take over the driving when parking or in stop-and-go traffic on the freeway up to 60 km/h.