Wired test drives -- or rather doesn't -- Audi's latest driverless concept car

 Audi unveiled its latest driverless -- or as the German manufacturer prefers to call it, "piloted" -- concept car at CES last week, and Wired.co.uk was lucky enough to join the police-escorted demonstration of this possible vision of the automotive future.

Cue a surreal experience of sitting in the back seat of a tricked out autonomous A7 while Las Vegas's finest top and tail the Audi Autopilot Car for a jaunt on the freeway to demonstrate the car's unnerving ability to stay in lane at speed and take over control of the vehicle.
Now, as Audi's chief technical officer Prof. Dr Ulrich Hackenberg pointed out from behind the untouched steering wheel, this new iteration of piloted driving will sadly not result in your very own Knight Industries Two Thousand. However, it will take a lot of the donkeywork out of your motorway drudgery. It is also a serious update on the previous model as the electronics have been actually fitted into the body of the car rather than taking up the entire boot, making the previous attempt look like something W Heath Robinson might have crafted.

Bristling with 12 ultrasound sensors, two radar sensors, one camera and one laser scanner, the concept car, which is expected to come to market in some form in three to five years, can "see" up to 500m in front of it in perfect weather -- and up to half that in normal to poor conditions. The radar has a narrow beam that reaches this long distance, while the laser scanner offers a broader field of view and stretches at least as far as 80m ahead in very poor conditions, such as fog and rain.

These sixteen sensors can read the road around the car to such a degree that the car is capable of navigating turns, keeping in lane and maintaining a safe distance from the car in front -- all with the driver free to take their hands off the wheel and feet of the pedals. They could, in effect, be reading Wired while on the motorway.
One unnerving incident in the demonstration was when Hackenberg showed off the system's ability to assess whether the driver has fallen asleep at the wheel. An infrared camera pointing at the driver's face can tell if their eyes remain closed too long (even if wearing sunglasses) and take action. After a series of audible warnings to retake control, if no response is forthcoming the car performs and emergency stop.

This ability was then put into action surrounded by all-too-real and completely unsuspecting daytime traffic on the Las Vegas freeway -- and this is where the police escort came in very handy to clear lane room -- and sure enough after a very short period of attempting to "wake" our driver, the car slammed on the anchors for a controlled halt as cars blurred by in the adjacent lanes at 60mph.

Even though this is a few years from being commercially available, the next generations of this technology will see Audi plan to integrate lane-changing ability, then on and off ramps. Looking further still Audi wants to see this working in urban driving -- though, as Hackenberg insists, the days where you will be able to call your car to come pick you up from the office are a long, long way off.