The AutoNOMOS
team (from left to right): Prof. Dr. Daniel Göhring, Dipl.-Inf. Tinosch
Ganjineh,
Prof. Dr. Raúl
Rojas, Fritz Ulbrich. Image Credit: AutoNOMOS, Freie Universität Berlin
Car Reaches Mexico City after 2400 Kilometers
(October 22, 2015) An
autonomous car developed at Freie Universität Berlin has traveled through
Mexico without any human intervention. Named AutoNOMOS, the car traveled 2400
kilometers and reached Mexico City on Tuesday. According to the researchers'
knowledge, this was the longest journey ever completed by an autonomous vehicle
in Mexico. The car traveled 2250 kilometers on freeways and 150 kilometers
through cities; part of the route led through the semi-arid Sonoran Desert.
Designed by researchers in the groups of Professor Raúl Rojas and Professor
Daniel Göhring, the car had previously traveled autonomously in Germany, the
United States, and Switzerland. Long-distance test drives of autonomous
vehicles routinely take place in the USA and in Europe. The researchers have no
knowledge of reports of this type of journey in Latin America up to now.
AutoNOMOS during
the drive, Daniel Göhring in the driver's seat.
Image Credit:
AutoNOMOS, Freie Universität Berlin
The scientists spent almost a year preparing for this test
drive. Last Sunday the autonomous car reached the city of Guadalajara after
traveling 1650 kilometers from the US-Mexico border. The car passed through
four Mexican states, crossed the semi-arid Sonoran Desert as well as tropical
regions in Sinaloa, and then crossed the mountains to Jalisco. The road
conditions included everything from new freeways to numerous construction
sites, as well as narrow old roads lacking lane markings and hard shoulders.
The Nogales-Guadalajara freeway is also interrupted several times by urban
areas. The "driving intelligence" required by the autonomous vehicle
was thus higher than that required for perfectly built and wide highways.
"These challenges are exactly what attracted us to the experiment in
Mexico, which was accompanied by police cars of the Mexican Federal Police,"
said Rojas.
The team consists of scientists led by Professor Raúl Rojas
and Professor Daniel Göhring from the Department of Mathematics and Computer
Science. In September some of the computer scientists drove through parts of
the USA and Mexico, collecting data from 6000 km of freeways in both countries.
They did this in cooperation with the University of Nevada in Reno. The
navigation maps required for autonomous drives are much more detailed and
complex than those required for conventional devices. The calculations for the
creation of maps with the collected data took place in Berlin up to the
beginning of October. The maps were tested on the road.