Audi to build cars that can predict the future

Audi is hoping to make traffic jams, parking and city centre navigation much easier with a new suite of technology called Audi Urban Intelligent Assist (AUIA), while Audi traffic Light Online helps you avoid red traffic lights.

Combining the work of its own Electronics Research Laboratory in Silicon Valley with four leading US research universities, the eventual aim is that this new technology will essentially be able to predict the future.

On Bing: see pictures of Audi Urban Intelligent Assist

On Bing: see pictures of Audi Traffic Light Assist

The ideas is that with constant and continual traffic analysis in the world’s biggest cities, Audi Urban Intelligent Assist will learn to anticipate the optimum time for your journey, and then use the most lightly congested routes to get you there.

Beyond this, the AUIA system would also help you pick the perfect time to change lanes or merge onto a motorway, give you satellite navigation guidance based on “naturalistic” visual clues such as landmarks, and even spot if you become distracted while driving and redirect your attention to the road.

Other advantages under development include further integration with your smart phone – meaning you could check the time to destination before you get in the car, and even be guided from your parking space once you’ve stopped nearby.

Audi Traffic Light Online, meanwhile, communicates with traffic lights in order to find out when they are next set to change. This information is then fed back to drivers in the form of guidance on how fast they should drive in order to avoid being stopped at red lights.

This has already undergone extensive testing, and been shown to improve traffic flow.

If Audi has its way, you’ll soon be out of excuses for being late to that next meeting…

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By motoringresearch.com