Gadgetory

hey what is up guys I'm Kim PhD here I'm out here at CES 2017 and I guess Mercedes saw what I was doing with all the other car videos with Tesla so they invited me out to the desert to take a look at the way they're attacking self-driving so obviously a lot of people know about Tesla and their self-driving capabilities it's practically what they're most known for but a lot of people forget or don't even realize a lot of other car manufacturers are working on the same thing in their own way so you're probably already familiar with Mercedes and their great reputation for you know quality and luxury and their interiors you've seen a move for but what they did here is they took a production eClass that you've already seen it's on the road but they outfitted and upgraded the interior with additional features and there's other sensors for what they call Drive pilot so that's coming in s-class later in 2017 so this isn't even out yet so yeah the car you're looking at is a bit of a Frankenstein mobile with a black box in the trunk not the prettiest thing in the world but hey it's a demo of the self-driving tech and that's what they're working on they're going to be playing in cars pretty soon so you can see where they've put the sensors they have the dual camera system all the way up at the front just like the Tesla it's reading street signs and speed limits and things like that and then there's also radar firing from behind bumpers on both the left and right hand side to see around the car and what's near you on the road and even a forward-facing radar to bounce off the car in front of you that's coming from literally behind the Mercedes logo so I got a little demo walk through from the Mercedes guys as they went through it basically they showed me all the features and walk me through it and I was comparing it in my mind to the way Tesla does it and then I was able to get in the driver's seat myself and check it out and I basically found I'd say two main differences versus the Tesla autopilot so the biggest difference is basically they're not using just the sensors and the cameras in the car for autonomous driving like Tesla does they're actually adding map data from a company called here Maps as well to augment that so it's not just the sensors in the cameras it's the sensors and the cameras and maps so basically in regular driving and normal roads that doesn't matter too much but it does add the ability to make a turn by itself when it's on the map so for example if I'm on a road and the car is self-driving and my turn is coming up you know a couple hundred yards before my turn I'll put the blame puron so the car keeps driving but when I do that it checks the map to see when the next turn is when you get close to it it'll slow you down automatically make the turn for you and then accelerate back up to the speed limit so that was pretty cool to see in action and the other thing is you know Tesla Model S is already level 2 self-driving so Lane Assist and adaptive cruise control combined but they're a little more relaxed about keeping your hands on the wheel like I'm used to it reminding me maybe every 30 seconds or so depending on the roads too you know get your hands back on the wheel pay attention just touch it to confirm you're still here but that makes sense in a level 2 system the Mercedes system Drive pilot is a little more about like keeping your hands on the wheel to be ready to take control back even when the car is still doing the steering so they put all the controls on the steering wheel itself instead of on a separate stock so you can control everything about the self-driving and the speed control and navigation everything without taking your hands off the wheel and the system also asks you to confirm you're paying attention maybe every 10 seconds or so it felt like which could feel kind of annoying if you're feeling lazy but they kept it easier with this little touchpad on either side of the steering wheel so you just basically touch it to confirm and paying attention so you don't really have to grip the steering wheel like you do in the Tesla you just touch either side of the steering wheel on the little pad and the warning on the dashboard goes away but that's the main difference that's what differentiates it from what I've used it doesn't take me that long to get used to it I got comfortable pretty quick and I trusted it on these roads I mean obviously I've used a car with autopilot before so it wasn't that crazy but the handling of turns was a nice little additional feature to have thanks to the map data the hard part though is GPS isn't perfect like maps aren't even perfect we all know we've all seen Apple Maps I even tried putting the blinker on near the end of my drive to make a right-hand turn but that road actually wasn't on the map so it just left the right blinker on and kept going it wasn't going to slow down so I ended up having to take control hit the brake and make the turn myself so it doesn't seem like a big deal you know it's the little things you can still do that it's clearly still evolving it's level 2 not level 5 but the question I have is will people trust it like would you trust it obviously tech enthusiasts like me who trust computers are totally fine with it but uh let me know what you think we think a self-driving thanks for watching this one and I'll talk to you guys the next one peace