Citroën Grand C4 Picasso with autonomous driving makes the trip from Vigo to Madrid without issues

Spain has witnessed one of the great milestones of autonomous driving. On Monday, November 23, a Citroën Grand C4 Picasso, equipped with all the driver-assistance elements available on PSA-Peugeot Citroën, left the company’s plant in Vigo and completed the entire journey to the Madrid plant in autonomous driving mode.

It covered 600 kilometres on dual carriageways and motorways, during which the vehicle itself carried out all the necessary manoeuvres on the road to reach its destination without problems. The onboard systems were able to adjust the vehicle’s speed as needed, staying below the speed limits set for each section of the route, as well as carrying out the overtaking manoeuvres required.

A month earlier, this same car had completed a similar journey in France, since the neighbouring country had previously authorised this type of testing on conventional roads. The Citroën Grand C4 Picasso has all the technology needed for this route, in which we see the driver completely relieved of driving duties, which are handled by the onboard computer.

The Citroën Grand C4 Picasso uses several technologies to make this journey in a completely autonomous way

To achieve this, several different technologies have been fitted, which detect the presence of other vehicles on the road and can read traffic signs to determine the maximum speed at which they can travel. They rely on various systems, such as GPS, to determine their position and the type of road they are on; 77 GHz front and rear radars and laser scanners to locate and identify the other vehicles on the road; and several digital cameras mounted on the bodywork, which determine the distance between the vehicle itself and the others travelling alongside it.

A control unit gathers all this information, processes it and sends instructions to the accelerator, the brakes and the transmission to carry out the manoeuvres needed to keep driving. Thanks to the data transmitted by the various sensors, the control unit recreates the environment it is driving through in real time, which allows it to make changes to the driving.

This model belongs to autonomous driving level 2, which allows travel on dual carriageways, motorways and roads with separated traffic flows in each direction. For now, it cannot drive on secondary roads, but this is a technology that is already available and could be ready for testing shortly.

In the video you can see how the car behaves and how the occupants travel on board, keeping an eye on the data gathered during the test, yet without having to touch the steering wheel at any point. Would you be able to travel in one of these cars? It’s sure to be fun…

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Source | PSA-Peugeot Citroën