Autonomous Mercedes-Benz Test-Drives on Historic Route of First Automobile

A fully autonomous vehicle completed a test-drive this month on the exact same route that the inventors of the automobile, Karl and Bertha Benz, chose for the very first long-distance drive of their patented invention 125 years ago. Using video-based positioning and navigation systems as well as intelligent sensors, the Mercedes-Benz S 500 INTELLIGENT DRIVE pulls out automatically into flowing traffic, reliably passes crossings, and recognizes obstacles.

The vehicle autonomously covered the route of about 100 km on federal and state roads through 24 cities and municipalities from Mannheim to Pforzheim. For this purpose, the Mercedes-Benz S model had been equipped with the necessary technology by Daimler AG in cooperation the Research Center for Information Technology (FZI) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

The sensor technology via which the vehicle perceives its environment was developed by Daimler, with similar systems already integrated in the most recent E and S class models. For the vehicle to react to the data supplied by its sensors, processes were developed by Daimler in cooperation with the team of Professor Christoph Stiller from the KIT Institute of Measurement and Control and FZI. Development of these processes mainly focused on calculating how the vehicle is to behave in traffic (behavior generation) and to choose the optimal route (trajectory planning).

“Based on the sensor data, the system determines the steering wheel angle, accelerations, and decelera-tions, that is where and how quick the vehicle is to drive,” Stiller says. According to him, the vehicle can drive through roundabouts and crossings, pull out into flowing traffic, recognize other traffic participants and traffic lights, and drive around obstacles. “In this research project, we demonstrated that highly automatic driving is possible with simple video sensors. Assistance functions to increase driving safety and environmental compatibility will be integrated in series vehicles soon,” Stiller adds.

For the drive on the route once chosen by Bertha Benz, Stiller and his team as well as Daimler also analyzed the contents of the novel digital maps required. These maps are comparable with the maps used for today’s navigation systems, but much more detailed. “These maps contain information that cannot or can hardly be determined by the vehicle during the drive, such as the location of driving corridors in the crossing area, the position of traffic lights or right-of-way rules,” Julius Ziegler explains.

Since June 2012, the project partners have made their autonomous vehicle cover a distance of more than 6500 km on public roads. During these test drives, two drivers were sitting in the vehicle for interference, if necessary. The test drives were hardly noticed by the public, as the research vehicle presented by Daimler at this year’s IAA (International Automobile Exhibition) cannot be distinguished from a series model. Earlier test drives were also carried out with the autonomous vehicle “AnnieWAY” developed by KIT’s Institute of Measurement and Control. In the past years, this vehicle was successful in international competitions. It won the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge in 2011 and was in the final of the 2007 Urban Challenge. -- KIT