The BMW Group has been investing a fair bit of effort into the development of self-driving vehicles. Now their endeavors can all be found in one central base of operations, at the new Autonomous Driving Campus located in Unterschleißheim, Germany.
The campus opened up this Wednesday, housing 1,800 staff members that originated from BMW, Intel, Mobileye, and more. The facility won't build their own pretend tracks, but will run their 40 prototypes on local roads and nearby autobahns. The company intends to expand their prototype list to as many as 80 by the end of the year, with products going out to the U.S., Israel, and China.
BMW's first "fully self-driving" vehicle will be the iNext, due to release in 2021. The crossover-like car will offer Level 3 self-driving capability. This means that the vehicle can drive itself, steering and all, but it may require a moments notice for reclaiming control.
The automaker wants to achieve Level 4 autonomy for the iNext, which is complete self-driving abilities, but the feature may not be publicly available at launch. BMW says that Level 4 will only work in traffic moving in the same direction and where there is a solid barrier separating oncoming traffic.
The ultimate goal is to achieve “Vision Zero (Accident Free Mobility).” Such an idea is fairly difficult to achieve, but the advancements made at this new campus will help drive society in the right direction.
BMW Forms Self-Driving Specialty Campus
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Posted On: Apr 13, 2018 @ 01:38 AM