Audi Urban Intelligent Assist

Audi was white hot at CES. To keep the
momentum going in the future, they are
investing in our universities to develop the best
Human Machine Interfaces. In other words, God
or Audi as your co-pilot.
Audi Urban Intelligent Assist (AUIA) is developing
technologies aimed at making traffic jams,
parking difficulties and tough urban navigation a
thing of the past. Through a partnership
involving its Electronics Research Laboratory
(ERL) in Silicon Valley and four leading U.S.
research universities, the automaker is
developing groundbreaking innovations in
predictive driving technology that would allow a
car to anticipate future traffic trends and
“learn” a person’s driving habits for a
customized driving experience on each commute.
Audi, with an eye toward increasingly dangerous
traffic patterns in the world’s biggest cities,
launched the AUIA research project to help make
urban driving safer and more convenient through
a number of revolutionary functions. Those
functions include technology that tells the
motorist the optimal time to leave for an
appointment, directing them on the most
efficient route to open street or garage parking
and naturalistic navigation based on visual cues,
driver awareness monitoring and signals on when
it is safe to accomplish maneuvers to merge or
change lanes on a congested highway.
The AUIA project is the latest in a series of
research projects that Audi has formed with
leading U.S. universities to explore the frontiers
of automotive technologies and electronics. The
project continues to make strides in solving
tomorrow’s mobility challenges and developing
technologies to provide motorists a stress-free
driving experience.
Recently, AUIA was demonstrated to a select
group of automotive industry and technology
media in San Francisco, Calif. Representatives
from the Volkswagen Group ERL and three of the
partner universities offered their insights into
AUIA technology followed by an exclusive drive
throughout the streets of the Bay Area.
“The real-life mobility challenges presented by
the streets of San Francisco provide a perfect
opportunity to demonstrate how Audi Urban
Intelligent Assist technology can transform a
vehicle from a stylish expression of one’s self
into a useful tool that can revolutionize the way
a person drives,” said Mario Tippelhofer, Senior
Software Engineer, ERL. “This project brings to
life a connected car that essentially predicts the
behavior of its driver, analyzes current and
future driving conditions and creates a safer and
hopefully less stressful experience for the person
behind the wheel.”
The San Francisco AUIA demonstration focused on
two primary applications: Audi Centric Urban
Navigation and Audi Urban Assistance. Both
functions utilize traffic information from
multiple on and off board sources to predict how
traffic in a city flows throughout the day and
combines this information with driver diagnostic
data to generate a route that is comfortable,
efficient and tailor-made to each driver.
Highlights of the featured technology include:
Audi Driver Centric Urban Navigation
• Time-2-Start notifies drivers via their mobile
devices how long it will take them to reach their
destination before they leave.
• Smart Parking combines the parking habits of a
driver with the availability of nearby parking
spots–parking structures as well as metered
street parking – to help identify parking spots in
a destination area and provide navigation to that
location.
• Predictive Traffic anticipates and analyzes
current traffic patterns based on present and
past traffic data, along with weather and event
information.
• Naturalistic Guidance uses surrounding
landmarks to provide detailed instructions for
easy navigation (e.g. “Please turn left at the
park”).
• Seamless Navigation provides walking guidance
to the driver from his or her “Smart Parking”
spot directly to their destination.
Audi Urban Assistance
• Merge Assist helps a driver merge on the
highway by utilizing components of speed
calculation and speed displayed in the instrument
cluster and green LEDs on the side mirrors notify
the driver it is safe to merge.
• Lane Change Assist monitors a driver’s blind
spot areas as well as fast-approaching vehicles
and hazardous objects in an effort to assist the
driver in changing lanes on the highway. The
system also analyses driver behavior to predict
when the driver intends to performing a lane
change. This coupled with the environmental data
allows the vehicle to signal the driver when it is
safe to change lanes via green LED lights on the
side mirrors.
• Attention Guard provides early detection of
driver distraction through countermeasures that
get the attention of a driver and bring their
focus back on the road.