This year’s Innovation Day was about the present and future of autonomous cars

This was the third time for the audience committed to driving and the newest technologies to meet up at the drivingcamp driving technique and event centre in Zsámbék. The Innovation Day event on 23 May covered the topics of the different levels of autonomous driving and the possible directions for development.

The CEO of drivingcamp, Reinhard Platzer greeted the guests at the opening, and emphasised in his speech that they pay special attention to innovation, and are devoted to the development of e-mobility. Thus, the programme series started with the ceremonial handover of the power charger of MVM Partner Zrt., which, from now, is available not only to the guests of drivingcamp but to anyone who wants to use it.

Zoltán Szilágyi from MVM Partner Zrt. said that at first, electro-mobility and autonomous driving might sound like two totally different topics, however, both will have fundamental roles in the future of sustainable transport. As one of the largest energy merchants of the country, MVM Partner Zrt. considers it one of its most important strategic priorities to offer complex e-mobility services to the electric car community, thus it’s going to further develop its infrastructure by installing additional service stations countrywide.

Dávid Bíró from AVL, the professional partner of the event held a presentation titled Cutting Emission with Predictive Control. As the largest independent corporation group engaging in developing internal combustion engines, hybrid engines, electric engines and powertrains, AVL is currently working on developing a software that optimises the energy management system of hybrid vehicles. The prerequisite for optimisation is synchronising the operation of the internal combustion engine and the electric engine. The software is currently being tested in a sim environment, and results show that thanks to the system, emission can be reduced by 7%.

Erich Ramschak, AVL’s Senior Product Manager engaging in AD and ADAS systems said that thanks to its innovative solutions and technologies, the company plays a significant role in testing and validating different assistant systems, however, it also contributes to mapping customer satisfaction that is measuring sense of security and comfort, which is key to sales and basically the acceptance of assistant systems.

Guests learned about the newest telematic generation of Mercedes Benz from Balázs Csordás’ presentation. The company presented the Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) at the CES2018 show in January 2018 in Las Vegas, which brings a major change in car multimedia systems. Earlier, systems “merely” served our needs (navigation, media, telephony etc.), the new system based on AI, however, supports our time spent in the car as a personal assistant. It adapts to our driving styles in a coordinated way (with mood lighting, different styles of the menu system, driving dynamics modes etc.), maps and remembers our habits, driving styles, and offers possibilities based on them, e.g. it offers navigation automatically on our way to work in the morning, considering current traffic, and with the fastest route.

The recently introduced A-Class produced in Kecskemét, which has the assistant systems of the S-Class, takes the technological knowledge of the compact segment to a higher level, taking a step closer to fully autonomous transport.

As it turned out from the presentation of Porsche Hungaria, the key condition to autonomous driving is perfectly precise (that is centimetre-precise) navigation and cloud-based information as cars must work with timely data for us to be safe. It’s a task for car manufacturers to develop vehicle sensors to perfection, and also to equip them with software that is able to process up to 4 TB of data a day. In his presentation, László Papp pointed out that simultaneously with technological development, the most important thing is to clarify the legal environment as there’s no official position on responsibility in case of an accident. From the brands distributed by Porsche Hungaria, the new A8 model of Audi offers category 3 autonomous driving, and 22 assistant systems reflect current technology in the newest model of Volkswagen Touareg.

Together with the conference, guests had the opportunity to test innovative cars like the Volkswagen Arteon R-line, the Volkswagen POLO Beats 1.0 TSI, the Mercedes e-Smart, the Mercedes C 350e, the Nissan Leaf or the Jaguar e-pace at the most modern track complex of Europe. The day was completed by mind-control games and the robotics show of the InnoRobot-X team. Thanks to Sixt, guests of the event were offered a chance to win a weekend Nissan Leaf test drive.