‘Autonomous vehicles will be prepared long before our roads are’

If there’s one person worth listening to on the subject of technology, it’s BMW’s British board member (and automobile reveal Brit listing winner) Ian Robertson. having introduced BMW’s i brand to establish his business at the forefront of electric vehicle tech – which is now paying off handsomely – he’s now at the forefront of BMW’s autonomous push.
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“We’re building a huge resource base in-house to take this forward,” Robertson told us. “We’re building a new school in Munich as well as in the second half of this year we’ll put forty 7 series on the road with the autonomous next steps on board. Over the next four-and-a-bit years we’ll establish the tech as well as that will be provided within the next i car.”
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Another huge step was the purchase of right here from Nokia (with Daimler as well as Volkswagen). “That’s moving quickly,” continued Robertson.
“The reason we did it was to get 20 million automobiles that might provide us real-time software application updatability. Mapping today is precise to 6-10 metres – for autonomous driving we requirement 6-10cm.”
“We’ve got systems that are establishing the predictability of web traffic lights, so it will sluggish the vehicle as it understands the web traffic light is altering so you don’t stop before you get going again. It’s utilizing web traffic flow, navigation data as well as vehicles interacting where they are as well as exactly how quick they’re moving.”
So the vehicles are ready, however what about legislation? “We want regulations as well as innovation running in parallel, as well as I’m not seeing that,” admitted Robertson. “The discussion needs to be open as well as there; at the moment it’s fragmented.”
That’s a worry. Robertson reckons we might end up with vehicles enabled to drive autonomously in some towns as well as cities as well as on some roads, not others – in the exact same country! Let’s hope governments don’t enable that to happen.
Are you ecstatic about the future of autonomy, or are you dreading the day motorists make method for computers? Leave us your thoughts below…