Audi to run with 'driverless' car

Audi's TTS Coupe quattro is a "drive by wire", controlled by a computer located in the boot.

Audi is set to tackle the Pikes Peak Hill Climb with a "driverless" TTS Coupe.

The planned run comes 30 years after the German carmaker's quattro permanent four-wheel-drive technology first appeared.

The driverless Autonomous Audi TTS Coupe quattro is a joint development between Audi parent the Volkswagen Group and Stanford University.

It is being aimed at several real-world driving challenges in 2010, including a possible test drive up the 20km Pikes Peak run in Colorado.

The Audi TTS project has been designed to explore current and future driver assistance technologies.

Dr Burkhard Huhnke, executive director of the VW Group's Electronics Research Laboratory, says the technology found in the TTS could help motorists respond more effectively to changing traffic conditions and allow better reactions to safety hazards.

"We believe that developing a car that can perform as well and respond as rapidly as a 'professional' driver, like a race or rally driver, will eventually be able to drive its way around incidents in a way that a 'normal' driver couldn't," he said.

"While a less-experienced driver may freeze or make the wrong 'correction', the Autonomous TTS would be able to take over or guide the driver to escape from a critical situation.

"It could also compensate if a driver is inattentive to conditions or distracted but, of course, it won't prevent all accidents."

For Audi, the Autonomous TTS run would also mark the company's return to the Pikes Peak course and its twists and turns.

American driver Bobby Unser set a new track record of 11:09.22 minutes in 1986 in an S1 quattro, to beat the 11:25.39 set in 1985 by Michele Mouton (Audi Sport quattro). In 1987, Walter Rohrl clocked 10:47.85 to set the first sub-11 minute time in a 2.1-litre, five-cylinder Audi quattro delivering almost 450kW, one of the most extreme Audi quattro cars ever built.

The new coupe is a standard Audi TTS quattro converted to "drive by wire". It is controlled by a computer located in the boot, but next year Stanford algorithms will be running in the car using Java "real time", receiving programming updates via telemetry with a range of 32km. Ultimately, it is hoped that aerial towers will be able to send and receive signals to these cars in a manner similar to the way cellular mobile telephone aerials today.

As a backup solution, the car includes a telemetry system that can transmit its parameters to a receiving station that can shut down the vehicle remotely or order the safety systems to bring the car to a controlled stop.