Gadgetory

hi I'm when cutting em here at CES 2014 now driverless cars are a huge topic here at this show earlier this week BMW showed me their version of a driverless car on a racetrack let's go take a look at that video now out on a racetrack north of Las Vegas BMW put me in the passenger seat of an m6 it's using to test driverless car systems a BMW staffer was in the driver's seat although he wasn't doing much driving we got on the track he put in an automatic mode and the car started to go around the track as fast as it could it took the turns following a good racing line to get maximum grip through the turns and put on as much speed as it could we went through a series of turns like that then we came up to the slalom this was a series of cones at the BMW had to negotiate get beard through the cones perfectly hit a chicane and then turn through that really nicely and then finally the most exciting bit of this tour was the wet corner the adobe had made one corner of the track wet and the car went into that corner and immediately went into a sideways drift the car by itself was able to counteract that gripped by cross turning the wheels compensating for the turn until I got to the dry where it could go straight once again the interesting about this car is it was actually using a GPS trail to find its way around the track the purpose of this research a vehicle was so BMW can test its longitudinal and latitude control systems these are systems that actually determine how the car handles the corners just like a driver would and they make up essential parts of a future autonomous car especially one that could handle high-performance driving this is an exciting day out on the track for me and it's prickly fascinating to see how the car could handle all these high-performance situations by itself this is the future of autonomous cars