Keynote lecture: Automated driving at Volkswagen Group Research - Future challenges for environment perception

Thorsten Bagdonat

Abstract: With the newly developed research vehicle “Sedric” — the first Volkswagen Group vehicle not associated to any brand — Volkswagen presents its vision for future mobility. Being fully electric and fully autonomous, Sedric will be the leading technology platform for automatic driving withing the Group. A brief overview of the recent projects within Volkswagen Group research regarding Level 2 and 3 automation for cars and trucks is given. These functions are based on a “classical” environment perception model including high level sensor data fusion for static and dynamic objects and the road. This model will be shortly discussed. With Sedric the next step towards level 4 and 5 in urban environments will be taken. For this, new technologies for environmental perception are needed, i.e. a redundant multi-modal sensor set, low level sensor data fusion, artificial intelligence for image processing, scene interpretation and prediction as well as a new, versatile path planner. The requirements for these new technologies will be presented alongside with an overview of current algorithms developed at Volkswagen Group research.