Filed under: Sedan, Marketing/Advertising, Technology, Videos, Mercedes-Benz, Specialty, Luxury
http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/GLOB/crop/3059x2052+1212+952/resize/628x417!/format/jpg/quality/85/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/adam/5ec74cb8c418a925df2b2d8e84c84738/Mercedes-Benz-S-500-Intelligent-Drive-000.jpg
To prove to her husband, Karl Benz, that the future of transportation was in automobiles, Bertha Benz drove a little over 60 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, in the Benz Patent-Motorwagen - her husband’s creation and widely considered the world’s first automobile - 125 years ago. Much more recently, Mercedes-Benz engineers followed the same route in a specially equipped autonomous S-Class, becoming the first people to be driven by a car, which dealt with pedestrians, traffic lights, roundabouts and all sorts of potential road hazards, on rural and urban routes.
The S500 Intelligent Drive research vehicle, however, is not as special as one might think. The sensors, radar, cameras and maps services used to make it autonomous are production-based, mainly used for active and passive safety features and adaptive cruise control. In the autonomous research vehicle’s case, there are more of them and they’re more strategically placed around the car for comprehensive coverage of its surroundings. All of the systems would be for naught if it weren’t for the complex algorithm developed to read their feedback and drive the car.
For those wondering which organizations Mercedes worked with to develop the algorithms and maps required to pull the self-driving experience together, it wasn’t Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Google, but their European counterparts, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Nokia, with its HERE maps services tailored to the research vehicle’s needs.
Watch the video below of the autonomous Mercedes making the road trip, and be sure to read the press release below, as well, which contains much more detailed information on the autonomous drive system. The gallery we included also has some diagrams to help explain how the Intelligent Drive system works.Continue reading Mercedes retraces historic first road trip with autonomous S-Class [w/video]
Mercedes retraces historic first road trip with autonomous S-Class [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 19 Sep 2013 07:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Commentshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=WMcJu9SY8Vw:P04sUoH_XT0:wF9xT3WuBAs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=WMcJu9SY8Vw:P04sUoH_XT0:V_sGLiPBpWU
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/WMcJu9SY8Vw