Skip to main content

Audi wants its driverless cars to drive like more humans

audi training autonomous human manners rs 7 piloted driving concept71 900x554
Audi
Audi has looked at the future and decided its self-driving cars should have human habits and manners, even if it’s not really necessary from an engineering safety perspective. Now the German car maker is training its autonomous vehicles to drive more like us for the comfort of passengers and other drivers alike, according to SlashGear.

Someday our roads may be driven only by driverless cars, or maybe there will be dedicated autonomous car lanes. When driverless and human-driven cars are on the road together, however, it could get dicey. Humans are going to need all the help they can get anticipating what an autonomous car is going to do next. We’re going to have a learning curve during this transition to sharing our streets with vehicles running on autopilot.

It may be a few years before we get used to driverless taxis, rental cars, and even our own self-driving vehicles. If you’ve ridden in a big city taxi lately, abrupt lane changes, starts, stops, and precision bus-passing and bicycle avoidance can be unnerving. Imagine what it could be like with a computer quickly reading many sensors and cameras and receiving information about lane traffic and signals ahead.

Part of the problem is that the onboard computer systems controlling autonomous cars are able to base decisions on more data and react with greater accuracy and speed than humans can. This could be disconcerting to human drivers if a driverless car switches lanes precisely, quickly, and without the kind of early notice that human drivers tend to give. And we’re not just talking about using turn signals.

For example, when we drive on the highway and prepare to change lanes, we tend to move to that side of our current lane. That’s exactly the type of human behavior that can distinguish human from autonomously driven cars. And that’s an example of the “human-driving” lessons Audi is teaching its A7 concept car, code named “Jack,” that’s piling up miles on the Autobahn.

Another example of human driving behavior is to move further to the other side of the lane when a large truck is passing in an adjacent lane. That may be a great idea for motorcycles, but it’s not as crucial for cars and SUVs. However, we still do it. Jack has that move in its programming now as well.

As autonomous vehicles come to our roads, their ability to signal human drivers with subtle moves that we’re used to will make the transition easier for the human drivers and passengers. Of course, once the roads have only other autonomous cars to communicate and contend with, we suspect that we’ll see more of the fast, precision driving that fully computer-controlled vehicles can really do. Now, can you imagine a movie plot where the autonomous cars anxiously await reaching stretches of road inhabited solely by computer-controlled cars so they can show off for each other?

Editors' Recommendations

Bruce Brown
Digital Trends Contributing Editor Bruce Brown is a member of the Smart Homes and Commerce teams. Bruce uses smart devices…
How a big blue van from 1986 paved the way for self-driving cars
Lineup of all 5 Navlab autonomous vehicles.

In 1986, a blue Chevy van often cruised around the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania near Carnegie Mellon University. To the casual observer, nothing about it appeared out of the ordinary. Most people would pass by it without noticing the camcorder peeking out from its roof, or the fact that there were no hands on the steering wheel.

But if any passerby had stopped to inspect the van and peer into its interior, they would have realized it was no ordinary car. This was the world's first self-driving automobile: A pioneering work of computer science and engineering somehow built in a world where fax machines were still the predominant way to send documents, and most phones still had cords. But despite being stuck in an era where technology hadn't caught up to humanity's imagination quite yet, the van -- and the researchers crammed into it -- helped to lay the groundwork for all the Teslas, Waymos, and self-driving Uber prototypes cruising around our streets in 2022.

Read more
Watch folks react to their first ride in GM Cruise’s driverless car
Two people taking their first ride in an autonomous car.

General Motors autonomous car unit, Cruise, has started to offer driverless rides to residents of San Francisco as it moves toward the launch of a full-fledged robo-taxi service.

Following a test run of the service last week, Cruise has released a video (below) showing the reaction of the very first passengers as they rode through the streets of the Californian city in a vehicle that had nobody behind the wheel.

Read more
We now know what the self-driving Apple Car might look like
A render that shows what the Apple Car might look like.

Thanks to several 3D concept renders, we now know what the future self-driving Apple Car might look like.

Vanarama, a British car-leasing company, took inspiration from other Apple products, as well as Apple patents, in order to accurately picture the rumored Apple car.

Read more