I sat in the passenger seat of a special Mercedes Benz S-Class on a blindingly bright California spring day, casually watching an automated delivery robot roll through a crosswalk in Santa Monica. The Mercedes Drive Pilot system, a Level 3 automated driving system that consumers may be able to order by the end of the year, is being demonstrated by the test driver next to me.
Mercedes wants to be the first company to bring legal Level 3 automated driving to the mass market in its full-size, luxury S-Class vehicles. The question is whether it should, especially considering the Everest-sized challenges that lay ahead, even if the economic opportunities are there.
The stakes are high. The Mercedes Level 3 system has to handle multiple tasks at once, including recording and exchanging vast amounts of data and giving ample time and warnings for the human driver to take back control when something goes sideways. Mercedes uses the Russian GLONASS system for its global positioning information in Germany, and there are legal risks that it will take on when the system is engaged.
Mercedes is going ahead despite the risks because the opportunity is too vast to ignore. Mercedes is the first manufacturer to offer a system that is legal in the U.S. and Germany. The system could be in the hands of consumers as early as mid-2023 because Mercedes is still working through the legal requirements.
The image was created by Abigail Bassett.
The trunk of one of the four development vehicles parked in the garage of the Proper Hotel in Santa Monica contains a huge amount of computer components. The test driver said that the trunk is open when we arrive. There is no room for your luggage or golf bags here.
When the car is in regular operation, these components register, record, manage and upload as much as 2.87 gigabytes of data per minute. If an incident occurs while the vehicle is underway, the system takes in as much as 33.73 gigabytes of data so that engineers can take a closer look at what happened and improve the system.
The Drive Pilot system in the S-Class vehicles will allow customers to keep their computer components out of the trunk. The Level 3 system will work and be able to process and store large amounts of data if the vehicle is present in the cars. Much of the data will be uploaded to a secure cloud system, but some of it will be kept on board.
The data comes from a variety of sensors around the vehicle, some of which will be new to future S-Class vehicles that have been ordered with the new Drive Pilot system. Representatives said that the system will cost as much as the Burmester system. The audio system on the S-Class is a $6,700 option alone, yet requires the addition of a separate $3,800 package, bringing the total to around $10,500. It is getting close to the cost of the full-self driving system fromTesla, which is $12,000.
The hardware and software used by Mercedes in their Level 2 ADAS system known as Distronic are used in the Level 3 Drive Pilot system. Additional advanced sensors and software are added to support the features. Future S-Class vehicles will include Valeo SA's advanced LiDAR system, a wetness sensor in the wheel well, rear-facing cameras and microphones, and a special antenna.
The Valeo system scans at a rate of 25 times per second at a range of 200 meters, which is more advanced than the current generation of S-Class. The second generation of the system is what the Valeo spokesman said. The system sends out lasers which create points in space to help the artificial intelligence classify the type of object in and around the path of the vehicle. The data from the other sensors around the car can be used to determine more than 400 different projected paths for both itself and the vehicles, pedestrians, and motorcyclists around it.
The rear of the driver's wheel well is where the wetness sensor is located. When the road is wet, droplets are thrown against it. The human in the driver seat will need to take over when the Drive Pilot is disabled.
The S-Class uses a variety of different satellites to locate the vehicle within a few centimeters. It is possible to identify which lane the vehicle is in. The Russian GLONASS system is one of the systems that Mercedes uses for its positioning information in Germany. The system can navigate the real world with the help of these preciseGPS points.
The Distronic system already includes interior cameras to make sure that the driver is paying attention, as well as radar, Ultrasonic, and 3D cameras outside. The added hardware ensures that each system has redundant hardware and that the driver is actually paying attention and not sleeping as the system navigates the environment and, unlike theTesla system, ensures that the driver is actually paying attention and not watching a movie while operating the vehicle.
There is a reason for all of this equipment. Mercedes-Benz takes responsibility for the safe operation of the system. Should something go wrong and the system crashes, the legal ramifications could be huge.
Mercedes has used vehicles like this one to test its Drive Pilot on more than 50,000 miles of roads in California and Nevada, where the company currently has licenses to run the system.
Mercedes expects the systems to be available on properly equipped S-Class vehicles by the end of the year, once the legal hurdles are passed. It will be limited.
The system will only be available in states where it is legal. If you cross the border into Arizona or Utah with an S-Class equipped with Drive Pilot, the system will not be available. It's outside.
The system won't engage unless the vehicle is on a clearly marked divided highway, not in an exit lane. The system turned off and requested that the test driver take over as soon as he indicated that he was changing lanes after he moved over to take an exit.
The system can only be used up to speeds of 40 mph (60 kmh).
The steering wheel controls glow turquoise when DRIVE PILOT is on. The image is of Mercedes-Benz.
Inside, the vehicle looks almost identical to an S-Class with one key difference: On the steering wheel sits a pair of buttons that fall directly under the driver's thumbs. When the external conditions are met, the buttons engraved with the image of the front of a car are used to start the Level 3 system. When the system is on, the lighting around the buttons and the steering column is white and green.
We took the 10 freeway in Los Angeles to downtown LA and back to Santa Monica. There were many opportunities for the system to fail because of the heavy traffic. Plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and more than one Angeleno making panic stops and randomly cutting into our lane of travel were some of the road obstacles we encountered within the first few minutes on the freeway.
When the system was available when all conditions were met, its operating appeared to be seamless. The handover was smooth. The driver disengaged the system, took his hands off the controls, and let the car drive itself, all while keeping his attention on the road ahead.
The gap between the S-class and the car ahead was large because the system uses maximum following distance. We didn't get to experience what might happen if a human made a sudden lane change in front of the car, because no one decided to jump into that gap while the system was engaged. When the lane markers became faint, an audible tone would sound and a message would appear for the driver to take over. The driver would take control of the vehicle at that point.
The system only worked for 10 minutes over our ride. As traffic sped up to over 40 mph, or the system lost the required information, each engagement was short. We didn't have enough time to evaluate the system, but we did get a glimpse of how Level 3 autonomy may work in the future. The real question is how the system will behave in customers' hands, and whether or not the very well-off will purchase the technology.
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