Audi tests autonomous vehicles in critical situations using virtual reality

Audi has long accustomed us to using the latest technological advances to develop its vehicles, in this case autonomous ones, which not only Audi but also many other brands are focusing much of their resources on today. The Ingolstadt brand, for example, already showed us one of its advances in this field at the end of 2016, its Intelligent Automatic Parking system.

Now they want to show us how Audi is developing the technology that will allow future autonomous vehicles to drive safely, that is, to anticipate those situations that could cause an accident, especially in an urban environment, where the dangers can be completely different at every meter the car travels. And to be honest, I think this is one of the factors that worries end consumers the most.

But unlike what other brands are already doing, which is putting autonomous vehicles on test in different cities around the world, Audi is for now doing it in a virtual environment, where it can change the scenes at will. To do this, they make use of virtual reality and the same simulation technology used for video games.

Right now, Audi’s virtual environments engineer Andreas Kern and video game developer Ralph Stock are working at Audi Electronics Venture on the simulation of the intersection assistant, a function that, according to Audi, is no longer far from being introduced in street vehicles. For this they use a device they have named Virtual Engineering Terminal (VET), on which they can run simulations of new technologies that are still at the prototype stage.

The example they give is of a Audi approaching an intersection, where a large building blocks the vehicle’s front view, but a double red arrow and an audible signal insistently warn the driver of an imminent potential danger: the radar sensors have detected a vehicle approaching from behind the building, so the Audi can begin braking with enough time in advance to avoid an accident.

Each time the scale model moves across the surface of the VET, a 65-inch monitor shows the Audi Virtual Cockpit and a computer-generated environment that adapts all movements with great precision. The video game sector has enormous experience in this area; in fact, these kinds of developments are the basis of many video games, which is why brands like Audi want to take advantage of it and learn from it.

But this does not mean that Audi is going to abandon tests with real cars, not at all. The problem today is that connected systems are still enormously complex to implement with real cars in real environments. So in this way, Audi can run and repeat as many times as they like all the scenarios they can think of without depending on real cars at every moment.

Source | Audi