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Audi Acting Alone: Piloted Driving RS7 Hockenheimring Run To Be Streamed Live

On Sunday, drivers of the German DTM series will converge for their final race of the 2014 season at the famed Hockenheiming. A league of drivers topped by BMW's Marco Wittman in 2014 (Wittman has locked-up this year's championship), DTM sees Audi RS5, BMW M4 and Mercedes C-Class race cars muscled around race tracks due to the direct result of the human element at the controls. For the last race weekend of 2014, a special, attention-grabbing Audi RS7 Sportback will be navigated around the famed German road course absent a driver.

Scheduled to make an appearance on-track Sunday prior to the main feature for DTM, the Audi RS7 Piloted Driving concept vehicle will negotiate the 4.574-kilometer Hockenhiemring circuit guided only by its autonomous drive technology. A 560-horsepower supercar many human drivers will simply long to wheel, the Audi RS7 five-door coupe conversion to a driverless concept vehicle involved few changes over the production vehicle with the quattro all-wheel drive and eight-speed tiptronic still present. Audi Piloted Driving technology added to the RS7 Sportback involves an intelligent network of controls for steering, throttle, braking and gear shifting guided by a GPS data transmitted through WLAN.

Early in 2013, an autonomous Audi TTS was given a drivers license in the state of Nevada. The driverless sports car now approved to be experimentally tested on Nevada roads has been the result of Audi working with Stanford University and Volkswagen Group Electronics Research Lab. In what has been previously one of Audi's greatest public exhibitions of their Piloted Driving technology, a TTS was launched up the historical hill of Pikes Peak in 2010. In that exhibition, the driverless car accomplished the hill climb in 27 minutes travelling at an average speed of just 27.6 miles per hour in that run. As a testament to the advancement of autonomous Piloted Driving technology from Audi, the auto brand estimates the driverless RS7 Sportback will achieve a full lap in 2 minutes and 10 seconds around the Hockenheimring on Sunday.

The Hockenheimring run is shaping to be the most public exhibits of Audi Piloted Driving technology. Easily over 100,000 race fans is expected to be on-hand to witness the Audi RS7 Piloted Driving concept running at performance thresholds few driverless cars have trekked. Additionally, Audi is preparing to live stream the run on the Internet.

Please take note this Car FYI article has included the Audi's live video stream. The live broadcast will start at 6:45 am eastern time with a behind the scenes look at the Audi RS7 Piloted Driving car with track time scheduled at 6:50 am.




Information and photo source: Audi AG

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