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Mercedes-Benz Intelligent World Drive on five continents - Interview Dr. Michael Hafner

Deep Learning in country-specific, real road traffic plays a central role on the road to autonomous driving. This is shown by Mercedes-Benz Intelligent World Drive, which ended at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas after five months. A test vehicle on the basis of the current S-Class completed a challenging study trip on five continents in order to ""learn"" in automated test drives in real traffic. From zebra crossings on Chinese motorways, turning off right from the left-hand lane in Melbourne, Australia, pedestrian traffic on all kinds of roads in South Africa or a temporary driving ban in the immediate vicinity of stopping school buses in the USA – on every continent the S-Class faced challenges which will have an influence on the driving characteristics of future autonomous vehicles. Automated and autonomous vehicles have to know about these country-specific particularities and understand them in their respective context in order to be able to make the correct driving decisions. The Intelligent World Drive also underlines just how important the international harmonisation of the legal framework for automated and autonomous driving and its infrastructure is, in particular of lane markings and traffic signs. ""The Intelligent World Drive makes it clear that autonomous driving requires global development activities and test drives"" says Ola Källenius, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG responsible for Group Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars Development. ""Automated and autonomous vehicles need international learning material from actual road traffic in order to understand traffic situations and to be prepared for different scenarios.