AutoNOMOS Labs

Owning you own car? Not necessary anymore. If you need a car, you can just call it. The search for a parking spot? A thing of the past. The car will drive on its own. A trip to the gas station? Not necessary anymore. The car will come to the driver ready for driving. If the vision of the team at Berlin-based AutoNOMOS Labs becomes a reality, all of these current trivialities involved in the car driving experience will no longer be necessary and resources will be used optimally. How? Because the car will drive without a human driver. Two prototypes of such autonomous vehicles have already been developed by the AutoNOMOS team: “Spirit of Berlin” and “MadeInGermany.”

“These care are like robots – but bigger,” says Patrick Vogel, commercial project coordinator at AutoNOMOS Labs. Indeed, the roots of the project can be traced back to robotics: AutoNOMOS Labs, which is funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research, is part of the “Artificial Intelligence” working group at the Institute for Computer Science at the Freie Universität Berlin (FU). Professor Raúl Rojas heads up the working group, which has already created an entire soccer team of robots, among many other robot-related things. “There are three principles in robotics that come up again with autonomous automobiles,” explains Vogel. “Perception, decision-making and action.”

“The technology is already very advanced”

Modern vehicles are already capable of perceiving. Sensors are installed at different points on cars and support the driver, for example, when parking or keeping safe distances from objects and other cars. “The technology in today’s cars is already very advanced,” says Patrick Vogel. “What’s missing is usually the connection between the individual elements.” Until now, the data received from sensors has been used for one particular function only. And yet, the information that parking assistance system sensors supply, for example, could also be used for the purposes of localizing the vehicle precisely. This why the team at AutoNOMOS Labs is working on different ways to connect the information in an intelligent manner.

“It’s going to be a while until an autonomous vehicle comes to market,” says Patrick Vogel. And yet, in the process of achieving that goal, a number of workable side-products, ideas and revelations have emerged, especially in the field of driver-assistance systems. For this reason, Patrick Vogel and his fellow scientists at AutoNOMOS Labs stay in constant contact to sensor manufacturers, automobile suppliers and research-oriented automobile manufacturers. The AutoNOMOS-Team is also in constant contact with other scientific institutes, such as the Technische Universität Berlin (TU). The support program known as ForMaT (Forschung für den Markt im Team), out of which the project is financed, is particularly well-suited for this approach.

Test Drives at Berlin’s Former Tempelhof Airport

A new field being explored by the AutoNOMOS Team is electromobility. “Right now, we’re working on equipping an electric car for the first time to make it able to drive virtually autonomously and to enable new applications,” says Vogel. In order to achieve this, our team gains access to the steering system and engine and equips the vehicle with sensors, a GPS and a computer. In the past several years, the AutoNOMOS team has been using the runways at Berlin’s former Tempelhof Airport. “Having that kind of huge site is one of the advantages of being in Berlin,” says Vogel.

The first prototype known as “MadeInGermany” is now making the move from the test track to the street. This year, the AutoNOMOS team received special permission from the city of Berlin and support from the regional TÜV certification organization for test vehicles undergoing trials. It is therefore quite possible that Berliners might encounter the autonomous automobile on the streets of their city very soon.