Audi at CES: Driverless Auto Parking, Matrix LED Headlamps, Next-Gen Infotainment, 3D Audio [2013 CES]

Audi’s display stand at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show hosted a veritable cornucopia of new technologies ranging from new LED lighting to autonomous-driving capability, but all fell under a central theme: “electronics trends over the next decade.” Audi thinks all of the stuff it brought to CES will be available to customers within that time frame. Some of the tech is arriving this year, but the company’s driver-less features probably won’t arrive until much later. We’ve broken down Audi’s CES announcements by category:  

LED Lighting Advancements

Audi is the manufacturer that brought LED accent lighting into vogue, and it plans to take things to the next level with what it’s calling the Matrix LED high-beam headlight. Even though it might look like a regular full-LED headlight unit, the Matrix has several tricks up its sleeve. It’s linked with a camera, which allows it to detect other cars and pedestrians. This allows the lights to automatically default to a brighter high-beam function; if other traffic or pedestrians are detected, the system can selectively shut off individual LEDs in the headlights to leave a break in the lights’ forward beam. This creates what can only be described as dynamic, choreographed shadows that “follows” the object or objects in front of the car until they are no longer in the path of the beam so as not to blind them. This same individualized LED manipulation affords Audi adaptive front lighting capability sans any mechanical swiveling hardware; the appropriate LEDs in the headlight clusters illuminate in sequence to create an aimed beam of light around corners. It’s all extremely trick, and even more compellingly, will make its production debut this year on the A8.

Piloted Driving

Second to car-app integration, this year’s auto-related CES news also focuses on self-driving cars. Lexus showed off an autonomous LS sedan, and Audi brought along news of its plans to introduce a traffic-jam assistance feature with low-speed (less than 37 mph) autonomous capability and a fully automated self-parking system that enables the car to go seek out a parking space sans driver or occupants. Audi also announced that it is the first automaker to get a license from the state of Nevada allowing it to test autonomous vehicles on public roads.

The traffic-jam assist feature was demonstrated with a simulator (seen above) and essentially mashes together Audi’s currently available adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist, thereby steering to hold lanes as well as accelerating and braking the car to and from a stop. The system only will work if it thinks you’re in a traffic-heavy situation; if traffic disperses, it relinquishes control back to the driver.

As mentioned, the autonomous parking function will allow drivers to exit their vehicle before instructing the car to find and park itself in a roadside or garage space. Unlike Audi’s currently available self-parking feature, which manipulates the steering while drivers handle acceleration, braking, and shifting, the Piloted Driving parking (Piloted Parking?) feature turns the car into its own valet. For underground parking garages, Audi predicts the parking facilities themselves will need to contribute some info to the car to assist in finding a space; this is accomplished via WLAN-equipped garages . . . of the future. Or maybe the present—Audi currently is working to thus equip a parking garage in Ingolstadt. Either way, the intention is that the car will then drive itself out of the parking spot and back to its owner when called upon.

So how close to reality are Audi’s Piloted Driving functions? Not far off—Audi showed off the compact laser scanner it plans to put in production (it takes the place of the large robotic-looking tower seen on autonomous cars from Google and Lexus) and stated it’s nearly ready for manufacture. The company tentatively said to expect traffic-jam assist to arrive with its next-generation vehicles. The self-parking system could be implemented within only a few years, although we think reluctance on the part of parking-lot owners to spend cash to upfit their facilities as necessary may hold this one up some.

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Cabin Technologies

Audi also debuted a host of fresh cabin technologies, ranging from the addition of 4G LTE connectivity for Audi Connect (coming this year, though to which markets isn’t yet clear) to display concepts like (glasses-free) 3D rear-seat entertainment screens and an OLED, camera-based rearview mirror that could soon show up in production cars. The automaker is already working on the second generation of the VW Group’s modular infotainment platform that debuted in the all-new A3 hatchback, and this new system (dubbed MIB 2) will incorporate an the even hotter NVIDIA-sourced Tegra 3 processor. (The A3′s system uses the Tegra 2.)

Finally, Audi demonstrated a prototype 3D audio system co-developed with Bang & Olufsen in a diesel Q7 crossover. Unlike 5.1 surround-sound or stereo, the 23-speaker, 1400-watt system (with four 3D loudspeakers) actually recreates three-dimensional sound. We briefly sampled the setup and can confirm that it is both hugely loud and hugely good at reproducing realistic sound qualities. The bumpin’ sound system will debut on a yet-unspecified Audi model next year.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/BrE8_fiQj0c/

Gary Hocking Ingo Hoffmann Bill Holland Jackie Holmes Bill Homeier