Audi RS7 completes Hockenheim lap without a driver (+video)

Audi has piloted an RS7 round the Hockenheim track without a driver – and at ‘race’ speeds – to demonstrate how far autonomous technology has progressed.

Last week we reported that a driverless Audi RS7 was going to do a lap of Hockenheim – ahead of the DTM finale – to showcase Audi’s latest autonomous technology, and it’s now done so at a decent pace and with no sign of human involvement in the cockpit at all.

It was slightly disconcerting to see the Audi taking the right lines, the right braking points and the right acceleration points on its own (as you can see in the video below), but it’s something we’re all going to have to get used to as autonomous technology starts to take away the mundane aspects of driving.

To make this feat possible, Audi used specially corrected GPS signals which are fed to via high-frequency radio and transmitted by WiFi, with the 3D cameras onboard filming the track and a computer program comparing that to stored image data to allow the RS7 to be orientated on track to within a few centimetres.

Ulrich Hackenberg, Audi’s Technical Development man, said:

The top performance by the Audi RS 7 today substantiates the skills of our development team with regard to piloted driving at Audi.

The derivations from series production, particularly in terms of precision and performance, are of great value for our further development steps.

A lot of autonomous systems are already incorporated in new Audis (as they are in other marques) including Side Assist, Lane Assist and Active Cruise, and it’s not a huge leap to get to fully autonomous driving, certainly in cities and on motorways, in the next few years.

So we might as well get used to it.