Audi will take a very special RS7 at the end of the DTM championship season in Germany. This RS7 promises to make a tour of the Hockenheim circuit in attack mode and without anyone at the wheel.
With no one behind the wheel?! That's right. It seems to be the future of the automobile. Cars that will do without the driver to take us from point A to B. Audi is not the only one to invest in autonomous driving, but it appears to want to be the fastest.
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In 2009, Audi with a TT-S set the speed record for autonomous vehicles, reaching 209km/h on the salty surfaces of Bonneville. In 2010, still with a TT-S, Audi attacked the 156 curves of Pikes Peak, taking 27 minutes, with a maximum speed reached of 72km/h, demonstrating the precision of the GPS navigation system. In 2012, the Audi TT-S found itself on the Thunderhill Race Track in Sacramento, California, with the aim of testing autonomous driving systems to the limit.
Valuable lessons that will culminate this weekend in Hockenheim, where the last race of the DTM championship takes place, and where Audi will take an RS7 Sportback with standard specifications, to make a lap of the circuit as quickly as possible. It's predicted to get a time of around 2 minutes and 10 seconds, with 1.3G decelerations, 1.1G lateral accelerations and crushed throttle on the straights, with the potential to reach a maximum speed of 240km/h on this particular circuit.
Steering, brakes, accelerator and transmission will be controlled by a computer that will receive information from GPS, high frequency radio signals and 3D cameras, which will guide the RS7 through the German circuit as if it were a pilot at his command.
The technology for self-driving cars already exists and we've been seeing it implemented in the cars we can buy today. Whether in cars that are already able to park in parallel without the driver interfering with the steering, or in active safety systems, in which the car can brake and immobilize itself on urban routes, in case it detects an imminent collision with the vehicle traveling to in front of us. A fully autonomous car is still a few years away, but it will be a reality.
At the moment, these technological demonstrations are multiplying. Audi's next challenge, should the RS7 successfully exit the test at Hockenheim, will be to tackle the mythical Inferno Verde, the Nurburgring circuit, in all its 20km long and 154 corners. There is a challenge!
