Sino-German Cooperative Efforts Related to Automated Driving

Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and China’s prime minister Li Keqiang together with Dr. Manfred Bischoff, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Daimler AG in front of the research car. Daimler has a joint research cooperation with Tsinghua University: the „Tsinghua Daimler Research Center for Sustainable Transportation“.

As part of the 2018 Sino-German government consultations, a special event with driving demonstrations took place on Tuesday, 10 July on the tarmac of Tempelhof airport.
During the event, Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang watched a demonstration of automated vehicles and cooperations between the German automobile manufacturers and Chinese partners.
Daimler was represented by Dr. Manfred Bischoff, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Daimler AG, and Ola Källenius, member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG responsible for Corporate Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars Development.

Automated testing was demonstrated using an E-Class. Under computer control, the vehicle precisely and repeatedly covers pre-programmed trajectories. This also allows the testing of safety-critical manoeuvres on enclosed areas. The actuators installed in the vehicle to control acceleration, braking and steering are not operated by the safety driver, as they are directly controlled by the computer.

To further the automation of automated driving, test platforms such as the statically displayed S-Class for multimodal recording and data collation of traffic scenes using camera and lidar technology are used in China and Germany as part of the cooperative arrangements with the renowned Tsinghua University. The aim is to improve the registration and intention prediction of vulnerable road users for future use in fully-automated vehicles.

 "Automated and autonomous vehicles need international learning material from actual road traffic in order to understand traffic situations and be prepared for different scenarios.
With the second extension of our cooperation as the 'Tsinghua Daimler Joint Research Center for Sustainable Transportation', we and our Chinese partner, the renowned Tsinghua University, are consolidating our local research & development expertise. The approval obtained only a few days ago to operate fully-automated test vehicles on public roads in Peking provides us with another valuable opportunity to drive our development work in this field forward," says Board of Management member Ola Källenius.

One day previously, on 9 July, in the presence of Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and the Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, both parties signed an agreement in the Federal Chancellory for further intensification of the research cooperation in the fields of automated driving and intelligent mobility.