Mercedes 1999 Annual Report Download - page 23

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FRONTRUNNER
17
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE. Spectators at LAB.01,
the DaimlerChrysler Project for EXPO 2000 (the
153-day world exposition opening in Hanover on
June 1), on a pre-visit to Barcelona last year as part
of a tour of six European cities. The project LAB.01,
an undertaking by the company’s communication
division, offers young people an interactive
experience with future technologies, that is meant
to stimulate their vision of tomorrow’s world.
Typically, its displays, which are spread over
2,000 m2, are anything but passive - the exhibition
has attracted large crowds and widespread
publicity everywhere it has been seen. More than
100,000 visitors and high media interest proved
the success of the extraordinary conception.
This second megatrend segues into a third, as mobility and
electronics meet modern information and communications
technologies. While this meeting occurs at every conceiv-
able level of product and process, it is most apparent in the
systems with which drivers and consumers will interact di-
rectly – the equipment and services they consciously use –
telematics for example, dynamic navigation systems that
will reduce traffic jams, fuel consumption and exhaust emis-
sions, and ease pressure on urban transport systems.
FROM VIRTUAL REALITY TO REAL VALUE. Then there’s the
IT under the hood - the engineering you don’t actually see, but
whose presence you register. At DaimlerChrysler’s Marien-
felde complex in Berlin, Wilfried Käding presides over the
automotive industry’s most advanced driving simulator. A large
projection dome mounted on six hydraulic actuators that run
up and down on rails, the simulator offers complete movement
to left and right, backwards and forwards, and up and down. A
car is bolted to the floor of the dome, and a visual display pro-
jected around the dome’s inner walls simulates driving under