Braunschweig’s mayor and TU president on a fully automated drive Joint test drive in the research vehicle at the Research Airport
On 31 August, a promise was kept: TU President Professor Angela Ittel took part in a test drive in an autonomously driving car together with Braunschweig’s mayor Dr Thorsten Kornblum. The ride took them along Hermann-Blenk-Straße at the Braunschweig Research Airport and offered a first taste of the planned passenger shuttle route.
The meeting point was the Automotive Research Centre Niedersachsen (NFF), where the research vehicle is constantly being developed further. The vehicle was the test vehicle “TEASY 3 – Testing and Engineering of Automated Driving Systems” from the Institute of Automotive Engineering, which has already been used successfully in a variety of projects and, in addition to automated driving in urban areas, also masters the domains of motorways and automated parking. Department head Dr. Maximilian Flormann and doctoral student and developer of the driving function Marcel Kascha provided technical explanations to accompany the ride.
Afterwards, the two passengers were presented with the current status of establishing an autonomous transport system on Hermann-Blenk-Straße by NFF Board Spokesman Professor Thomas Vietor and NFF Managing Director Dr Adrian Sonka. These are being driven forward in the research field “Intelligentes Fahrzeug und vernetztes Fahren” (Intelligent Vehicle and Connected Driving) under the direction of Professor Roman Henze. In the next two years, a driverless, electric passenger shuttle is to provide better networking of the mobility cluster at the Research Airport in flowing traffic and at high intervals or according to individual customer needs.
The distinctive feature compared to many previous demonstrations is the high – traffic-adapted – speed of 50 kilometres per hour of a real driverless vehicle. Its operation is realised by triple redundant systems (two of them in the vehicle and a backup via the infrastructure).
“Today’s drive demonstrates an important stage of development in the research field ‘Intelligentes Fahrzeug und vernetztes Fahren’ [Intelligent Vehicle and Connected Driving] at the NFF and TU Braunschweig, with which we want to show the most advanced and safe driverless vehicle concepts not only in theory, but also put them on the road. This is a clear signal that we are not only conducting top-class research at state level, but also at national and European level,” says the President of Technische Universität Braunschweig.
Braunschweig’s Lord Mayor Dr. Thorsten Kornblum was enthusiastic: “This was a fantastic experience that once again made it very clear to me that work is being done on the development of innovative and forward-looking technologies at the research location Braunschweig. We will definitely do our part as a city to support this already successful project to the best of our ability and continue the good cooperation with TU Braunschweig.”
The shuttle activities are being worked on by the NFF, among others, in the project “SUE – Self Driving Urban E-Shuttle”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK).
