Automotive  

The new 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class will be equipped with a wide range of self-driving features, which won't make it fully autonomous, but will allow it to relieve the driver of control of some of the most important functions.

German car maker Mercedes-Benz is making great strides in the development of driverless car technology, as it tries to keep up with the likes of Tesla, Nissan, BMW, Audi and tech company Google in the race to introduce a fully-autonomous car to the market. Their latest solutions that has to do with autonomous driving will be implemented in the new generation E-Class, which will have its world premiere at the 2016 Detroit Auto Show.

The 2017 E-Class will be equipped with a wide range of self-driving features, which won't make it fully autonomous, but will allow it to relieve the driver of control of some of the most important functions. The advanced safety and self-driving features that will be offered on the new E-Class will include Remote Parking Pilot, Evasive Steering Assist, Active Blind Spot Assist, Attention Assist, and Car-to-X Communication.

In addition to this, the sedan will be fitted with an expanded version of Mercedes-Benz's Intelligent Drive System, which includes adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assistance, helping the car maintain a safe following distance behind the car in front of it, and prevent it from leaving its lane unintentionally. Mercedes-Benz has fitted the vehicle with a total of 12 ultrasonic sensors, 5 cameras, and 5 radars, in addition to an on-board processor. The remote parking pilot and the car-to-x communication capabilities are certainly among the most interesting and intriguing features that the new E-Class is getting.

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The 2017 E-Class will be able to alert other drivers on potentially hazardous situations on the road in real time, so that they can react in time and adjust their speed accordingly or choose a different, safer route.

Remote Parking Pilot

This will undoubtedly be one of future E-Class owners' favorite functions, as it will relieve them of the hassle involved in trying to find a vacant garage parking spot and getting in and out of narrow parking spaces. With the help of the sensors, the car can get in and out of a parking space by itself, without the help of a driver. The driver will be able to get out of the car and then park it remotely using a smartphone app, which will allow the vehicle to enter narrow parking spots, since the driver and the passengers will have left the car, so the car's doors won't have to be opened after the vehicle is parked.

Car-to-X Communication

Technologies that allow vehicles to exchange information with each other have a great potential for improving traffic safety. The 2017 E-Class will be able to alert other drivers on potentially hazardous situations on the road in real time, so that they can react in time and adjust their speed accordingly or choose a different, safer route. The information will be uploaded onto the cloud by a vehicle that is equipped with this system, and then sent to all vehicles that are traveling along the same road and have the same car-to-x communication capability.

A couple of months ago, Mercedes-Benz demonstrated a fully-autonomous concept vehicle, the F 015 Luxury in Motion, but the company noted that it will take at least a few more years before such a vehicle is available for purchase. Until then, consumers will be able to enjoy cars like the 2017 E-Class, with various advanced self-driving capabilities that will surely make driving a lot safer and easier.

By Jordan Perch

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Author Bio - Jordan Perch is an automotive fanatic and “safe driving” specialist. He is a writer for DMV.com, which is a collaborative community designed to help ease the stress and annoyance of “dealing with the DMV”

 Self Driving Vehicles  

The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 study will be providing a visually exciting and technically feasible take on the long-distance truck "highway pilot" provides a glimpse of the future shape of trucks.

With several car makers developing autonomous driving technology and intending to start selling cars that can drive themselves within the next 15 years, it's becoming clear that the future of transport is self-driving cars. But, autonomous vehicles are not only going to change personal transport, they are bound to have an impact on commercial transport, as well. While the likes of Google, Nissan, Audi, Volvo, and BMW, are focusing on personal self-driving cars, Mercedes-Benz has been working on a semi-trailer truck that could drive autonomously, promising to make truck drivers' lives a lot easier.

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The German luxury car maker recently unveiled a self-driving 18-wheeler concept, dubbed the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025, meaning it should hit the road in ten years. In a blog post on the company's website, Mercedes-Benz said that autonomous driving “already possible at realistic speeds and in realistic motorway traffic situations”, and that "In ten years' time, trucks could be driving autonomously on motorways.” Mercedes also underlined that increased transport efficiency, improved traffic safety, and reduced carbon emissions and fuel consumption will be some of the benefits that self-driving trucks will bring.

The Future Truck 2025 is equipped with Mercedes' “Highway Pilot” system, which integrates several autonomous driving functions (such as blind spot technology), along with radar sensors and a 3D camera. The sensors and the camera monitor and scan the truck's surroundings up to 200 of it, so that it can be able to avoid pedestrians, various moving objects and hurdles on the road, and the wireless Internet connection allows it to communicate with other vehicles and with the infrastructure, so that it can share and receive information about road and weather conditions and potential road hazards. The vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication also allow the truck to share its location and moving speeds at all times.

However, unlike Google's self-driving car, this truck will not be able to navigate city streets, and it's autonomous driving system will only be usable when driving on the highway. This means that the driver will have to bring the truck to the highway and only activate the autonomous system after merging into traffic on the interstate. Once a driver gets onto the highway, they can give control of the vehicle over to the Highway Pilot system, which will move the truck at speeds of up to 53 mph. The truck's navigation system can detect if the vehicle needs to get off the interstate, based on the route preset by the driver, and alert the driver that he needs to take control. In case the driver doesn't take over the wheel, the autonomous system will activate the emergency brake and bring the vehicle to a stop.

The Future Truck 2025 is obviously just a prototype, and Mercedes-Benz will continue to develop the system in the following years, hoping to build a fully-autonomous truck that will be commercially available by 2025, and the whole trucking industry would benefit a lot from such a vehicle, as it will help reduce trucking companies' operating costs, and make the truck driver job look much easier, which should help the industry avoid driver shortages in the future.

By Jordan Perch

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Author Bio - Frequent 33rd Square contributor Jordan Perch is an automotive fanatic and “safe driving” specialist. He is a writer for DMV.com, which is a collaborative community designed to help ease the stress and annoyance of “dealing with the DMV.”

 Self Driving Cars  

With its S 500 INTELLIGENT DRIVE research vehicle, Mercedes-Benz became the world's first automobile manufacturer (that is if Google doesn't start making cars) to demonstrate that autonomous driving in rural and urban traffic is possible.

Mercedes-Benz has successfully completed the first autonomous cross country and inner city drive, using near-production-standard sensor systems.

The Mercedes-Benz S 500 INTELLIGENT DRIVE research vehicle covered 100 Kilometer from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, under real traffic conditions and complex situations including traffic lights, roundabouts, pedestrians, cyclists and trams.

Mercedes-Benz revealed the full details of the first autonomous long distance drive at the Mercedes-Benz Media Night, last week at the 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show.

While other companies have shown self driving cars either on closed roads or using complex technologies, Mercedes-Benz achieved this goal with the aid of near-production-standard technologies, very similar to those already available in the new E and S-Class.

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The route was not arbitrary chosen but retraced that taken by motoring pioneer Bertha Benz exactly 125 years ago when she boldly set off on the very first long-distance automobile drive.

For Mercedes-Benz the autonomously driving car is not the attempt to ban the driver from the driver seat. While self driving cars will be a reality of future mobility, it is first and foremost the next logical step on the way to accident free driving.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, Mercedes-Benz has presented 14 research vehicles - from the Auto 2000 of 1981 through to the F 125! of 2011. Many of the systems presented in these research vehicles, which were still considered a utopian ideal in those days, are now standard features in Mercedes-Benz production cars.



SOURCE  CCM World News

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