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Self driving autonomous cars: Audi to make it a reality

Have you ever imagined a world where there is no need of the driver’s seat in a car or where there is no steering wheel in a car? You must have gone into the world of Star Trek or Batman where there is a prominent display of next gen cars and gadgets. If all goes well, Audi will be the one car company this will make this a reality. Audi has given a call that it will develop cars that will need no humans for driving it. Audi claims that it will make it possible using technologies like geo positioning and sensors.  

Considering auto drive mode as the future of cars, Audi is in the process of building up cars that will reach their destination even in dense traffic easily and gliding through even the tightest corners. Mr Rupert Stadler, Chairman, Audi AG at a recent conference defines a future car as that car that is driven by itself and needs no assistance or human know how to park itself. Taking a pun on the issue, Stadler said that the car is not able to wash itself.

Emphasizing the need and use of the global positioning and automatic sensors that have made driving all the more easier for people now a days, Stadler reportedly said that future cars will be able to communicate with each other and decide their way accordingly. Thus, where future cars will make travel effortless, these will also make it safer and hassle free. Therefore if the cars are able to communicate with each other there will be no accidents and roadblocks or traffic jams, Stadler reportedly further said. However, driving still will be pleasure in future as there will be an option of manual override where the car will be controlled by humans. The model of future cars that Stadler has presented is more so of an autonomous drive system which can be switched on and off by the driver. Audi TTS Pikes Peak is one such self driving car project in process by Audi. In addition to Audi’s project there is Toyota Prius that has been modified to operate as a Google driverless car. Volkswagen Golf GTI is another example of a modified Golf car that drives autonomously.

However, car makers around the world are in the process of devising cars that need no human intervention and are driven autonomously. They will turn, they will stop at traffic lights autonomously, they will accelerate, decelerate autonomously based on the pressure of the traffic and road quality.

Fortunately, there are cars available that park autonomously. Even most of the Audi cars including Audi A6, Audi A7 and other all have parking sensors assisting the driven in parking. There are GPS systems fitted in cars that let the driver know the exact location and similarly there are many automatic operations such as lowering of the suspension at high speed and other features that are available even today in cars. However, autonomously driven cars will be a step further in the history of cars. There are though frequent experiments currently carried out by some car makers in devising autonomously driven cars. Such cars need minimal human assistance and can be programmed to reach a destination autonomously.