Mercedes 2015 Annual Report Download - page 104

B | COMBINED MANAGEMENT REPORT | SUSTAINABILITY 111
Trailblazing advances on the road to autonomous
and accident-free driving E pages 4 ff
During the year under review, we made tremendous progress
on the road to series production of autonomously driving
vehicles, thereby underscoring our technological lead in this
area. The milestones for passenger cars in this respect were
the F 015 Luxury in Motion and Vision Tokyo research vehicles.
With regard to trucks, we received permission to test the
Highway Pilot on public roads in both the United States and
Germany. We put the autonomously driving Freightliner
Inspiration Truck on the road in the United States last May, and
the first partially autonomous production truck had its pre-
miere on a Germany highway in October. The latter vehicle is
an Actros equipped with the intelligent Highway Pilot system.
The components used in our research and test vehicles are
gradually being put into series production, which means
partially autonomous driving is already a reality in our produc-
tion vehicles. For example, the basic elements of the auto-
nomous vehicle system in the Freightliner Inspiration Truck
have already been successfully implemented in the Freightliner
Cascadia Evolution model, thousands of which are shaping the
image of America’s road freight transport. In the form of the
DISTRONIC proximity cruise control system installed in many
of our Mercedes-Benz vehicles, the DRIVE PILOT can not only
automatically maintain a proper distance to vehicles ahead but
can also safely follow them at speeds of up to 210 km/h. The
system supports drivers during steering and evasive maneuvers
as well.
New standards for safety, comfort and stress reduction will
also be set once again when the new E-Class is launched in the
spring with new driver assistance systems, car-to-X communi-
cation technology and innovative safety systems. For example,
the new assistance systems package will enable partially
autonomous driving on highways and secondary roads and
make it possible to automatically move a vehicle in and out
of tight parking spaces using a smartphone app without any-
one inside the car. An autonomous braking feature will also
reduce the risk of an accident in a greater number of situations
than before. In addition, the Active Lane Change Assist system
will make autonomous lane changes possible for the first time
(e.g. for overtaking). Car to-X communication systems provide
timely warnings of dangers ahead and state-of-the-art radio
technology transforms the smartphone into a car key.
In addition, the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class is the first
series-produced car worldwide to receive a test license for
autonomous driving in the US federal state of Nevada. For
the first time and punctually for the main trade fair for consumer
electronics, the CES in Las Vegas, three series-produced
E-Class cars were approved in January 2016. E pages 30 ff
UR:BAN: New assistance systems for city driving
Cross traffic, cyclists, crossing pedestrians (perhaps totally
engrossed in their smartphones), children playing — city
traffic places demands on drivers in many different situations,
while at the same time harboring many dangers as well. So
there is plenty of scope for assistance systems that support
drivers and also make driving in cities safer and less stressful.
With this goal in mind, Daimler researchers achieved a break-
through within the framework of the UR:BAN research initiative.
Using “scene labeling,” a camera-based system automatically
classifies completely unknown situations and thus detects all
objects that might be of importance to driver assistance
systems – from cyclists to pedestrians and wheelchair users.
Daimler researchers showed their system thousands of photos
from various German cities. In these photos, they had manually
and precisely labeled 25 different object classes, such as
vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, streets, sidewalks, buildings, poles
and trees. The system used these examples to teach itself
how to correctly classify completely unknown images automati-
cally, and thus detect all important objects for driver assis-
tance systems even if such objects are largely hidden or far away.
Such abilities are made possible by powerful computers that
are artificially networked in a manner similar to the neural
networks in the human brain. The result is known as a deep
neural network. Scene labeling transforms the camera from a
simple measuring system into an interpretive system as
versatile as the interaction between the human eye and brain.
The tremendous increase in computing power in recent
years is bringing us closer to the day when vehicles will be able
to see their surroundings in the same way humans do, and
are also able to correctly understand complex situations in city
traffic. In other words, the vision of autonomous and accident-
free driving is becoming more and more of a reality.
High-resolution LED headlights
The future E-Class opens up new dimensions in headlight tech-
nology. The model’s MULTIBEAM LED headlights are now
equipped with 84 high-performance LEDS rather than the pre-
vious 24. This means the headlights in the new E-Class enable
the resolution of the light pattern to be increased by a factor of
3.5. Other road users can therefore now be protected more
precisely against blinding, and back-glare can be more effectively
avoided as well. This new dimension of precision in light
distribution makes it possible to use the partial high-beams
longer, thereby increasing safety even further. Drivers also
benefit from improved illumination of the road. The MULTIBEAM
LED headlights have partial high-beam light output up to 2.5
times greater than that of most systems on the market today.
The completely freely configurable high-resolution light
distribution has made it possible for the first time to implement
all high- and low-beam functions of the Intelligent Light System
in an entirely digital mode in the new E-Class. As a world first,
the dynamic cornering light function is now purely electronic.
In addition, a broad range of new, adaptive light functions is
possible, which will make driving at night and in inclement
weather even safer for both the driver and other road users.