If Bosch and Daimler make common cause, you do not necessarily foreshadow the next diesel scandal. Quite the opposite: The two German industrial giants cooperate in automated driving and want to make a metropolis in the Silicon Valley uncertain. Where uncertain is actually the wrong expression. After all, automated driving, ie Level 5, should bring a high level of comfort and - to be precise - safety. At the same time, however, the Bosch-Daimler cooperation expresses a challenge to Waymo and Uber.
"Alfred, to the Bat Cave!"
What Bruce Wayne once said to his chauffeur should soon be possible without staff. In the second year of 2019, first of all, you are forcing a combination of different driving services, such as Car2go, moovel and others. They are used to simulate a test operation intended to show how fully automated, driverless vehicles can be integrated into a current transport network. The test area? A metropolis in California. Important here: traffic scenarios, as they take place in typical urban areas.
And Bruce Wayne? Well, he's about to get into a vehicle designed by Bosch and Damiler and tells the computer he wants to go to Bat Cave. Every other passenger should be able to do that - you really do not have to be Batman for that. Technology supplier Nvidia plays an important role here, as it develops the artificial intelligence behind the system. The vehicle at level 5 level should be able to be ordered by smartphone. Different scenarios are conceivable: for example, the use of a car-sharing car or a taxi. But just with the difference that you do not drive yourself, but as if by magic hand driving through the area.
No pain no gain
This, of course, hides a huge amount of data, which results from the evaluation of innumerable sensor data. Autonomous vehicles recognize everything around them - in the best case, right? Tesla? And from this data, which accommodate the various sensors, the information processing must take place in the millisecond range. At the same time! For this, Nvidia has developed a platform on which various ECUs are combined to form a network. Careful, now it will pay heavily: The control units can record hundreds of billions of data within milliseconds. The data comes from radar, video, lidar and ultrasonic sensors and their interaction. And even more numbers: Only the stereo video camera generates 100 GB of data. PER HAZARDOUS KILOMETER! As a self-driving driver, you can tap on the back of your shoulder and pout your lips about the amount of data your brain can use to get to work on a daily trip. OK, ok: If you're traveling on the freeway more often, you'll find that human systems often operate at a low level. But there is another topic.
However: Boch and Daimler actually start at this point. People make mistakes. And to eradicate this, you see an autonomous, automotive future. Ultimately, the findings from Silicon Valley are reaching out to Stuttgart and the rest of the world. We can only hope that the voice input for the autonomous destination works better than Alexa, Google and Siri. Otherwise you end up in Bordeaux instead of Porto ...