iDomN8U

http://www.auto123.com/en/news/self-...ifornia/60997/

cool story and innovation.

Saki GT

Its a cool story - I look forward to automated commutes, but I don't need a car to do the spirited driving for me. ;P

rob-2

I cannot wait until people buy these automated cars. It's going to make my life so much fun!

Not Sure

In my over-crowded city traffic moves at about 10 mph faster than the speed limit. Cars that drive no faster than the speed limit cause bottlenecks and traffic jams. A road full of automated cars going no faster than the speed limit would turn my 1 hour commute into a 2 hour nightmare.

Chris_Lum

Traffic isn't necessarily caused by people that go the speed limit. I can almost guarantee you that if EVERYONE drove perfectly and the speed limit, then there would be very little traffic. Traffic is mostly caused by those people not paying attention, different reaction times, different reactions to obstacles in their environments, different merging speeds, and much much more. For example, with all the texting people do now, I see a lot of people looking down and tapping their brakes frequently and unnecessarily. This causes others behind to start slowing down in reaction and it causes a chain reaction as drivers behind start braking earlier and earlier to form a safety buffer.

Another example is merging onto highways. Frequently traffic is caused by people slowing to get off the highway and the highway slowing to let people on. If cars were automated and sped the car up enough to highway speed (and rearranged cars so new cars could have room to enter the highway) so the "zipper effect" could work better, then we'd have less traffic.

Automated cars should get rid of a lot of the "human error" and make traffic run much smoother. Of course it won't work that great until ALL cars are automated. Having only a partial amount will only do so much.

I personally look forward to automated driving (for traffic alleviation purposes), but on the other hand, going back to the concept of it not really helping unless 100% of cars are automated, I don't really care for it because I wouldn't want to be a slave, not being able to drive my car however I want.

jeffbrig

I get that it's fast, but it kinda misses the point of it being *FUN* thought, doesn't it.

iDomN8U

Yes, and I don't think that's the point. It's more about driving a car at an extreme and being able to do it automated.

Probably to meet a few objectives:
Marketing promotion for Audi and it's innovation
Learning about a car's extreme dynamics in this environment and being able to adapt (design automation to handle inputs at this speed)
Integrating what's was learned into future safety features such as automated high speed correction maneuvers and extreme braking.

This will not lead to a new automated F1 where all the cars stay in the same position throughout the course.

They will need to compete at some point too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car

blkwidow

The point is we need a robot from the future to help us prevent Skynet from going live.

cdelena

And then we can get robots to watch the races and we can ignore the whole thing.

Saki GT

Doesn't this happen with F1 already?