Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Self Driving Mercedes: Behind the Wheel!”.
Hey what is up guys, mkbhd here and i’m out here at ces 2017, and i guess mercedes – saw what i was doing with all the other car videos with tesla. So they invited me out to the desert to take a look at the way they’re attacking self-driving. So obviously, a lot of people know about tesla and their self-driving capabilities. It’S practically what they’re most known for, but a lot of people forget or don’t even realize a lot of other car manufacturers are working on the same thing in their own way. So you’re probably already familiar with mercedes and their great reputation, for you know, quality and luxury and their interiors you’ve seen them before.
But what they did here uh is. They took a production e-class that you’ve already seen it’s on the road, but they outfitted and upgraded. The interior with additional features and there’s other sensors for what they call drive pilot, so that’s coming in s-class later in 2017, so this isn’t even out yet so yeah the car you’re looking at is a bit of a frankenstein mobile with a black box in the Trunk, not the prettiest thing in the world, but hey it’s a demo of the self-driving tech and that’s what they’re working on they’re going to be putting it in cars pretty soon so you can see where they’ve put the sensors. They have the dual camera system. All the way up at the front, just like the tesla, it’s reading street signs and speed limits and things like that and then there’s also radar firing from behind bumpers on both the left and right hand, side to see around the car and, what’s near you on The road and even a forward-facing radar to bounce off the car in front of you that’s coming from literally behind the mercedes logo, so i got a little demo walkthrough from the mercedes guys as they went through it. Basically, they showed me all the features and walked me through it, and i was comparing it in my mind to the way tesla does it and then i was able to get in the driver’s seat myself and check it out, and i basically found i’d say two Main differences versus the tesla autopilot, so the biggest difference is basically they’re, not using just the sensors and the cameras in the car for autonomous driving, like tesla, does they’re actually adding map data from a company called here maps as well to augment that.
So it’s not just the sensors and the cameras, it’s the sensors and the cameras and maps so basically in regular driving and normal roads that doesn’t matter too much, but it does add the ability to make a turn by itself when it’s on the map. So, for example, if i’m on a road and the car is self-driving and my turn is coming up – you know a couple hundred yards before my turn. I’Ll put the blinker on so the car keeps driving, but when i do that it checks the map to see when the next turn is, when you get close to it, it’ll slow you down automatically make the turn for you and then accelerate back up to the Speed limit so that was pretty cool to see in action, uh and then the other thing is, you know: tesla model s is already level two self-driving, so lane assist and adaptive cruise control combine. But there are a little more lacks about keeping your hands on the wheel, like i’m used to reminding me, maybe every 30 seconds or so depending on the roads to you know, get your hands back on the wheel. Pay attention just touch it to confirm. You’Re.
Still here, but that makes sense in a level two system, the mercedes system, drive pilot is a little more about like keeping your hands on the wheel to be ready to take control back even when the car is still doing the steering. So they put all the controls on the steering wheel itself instead of on a separate stock. So you can control everything about the self-driving and the speed, control and navigation everything without taking your hands off the wheel, and the system also asks you to confirm you’re, paying attention, maybe every 10 seconds or so it felt like which could feel kind of annoying. If you’re feeling lazy, but they kept it easier with this little touch pad on either side of the steering wheel, so you just basically touch it to confirm you’re paying attention, so you don’t really have to grip the steering wheel like you do on the tesla.
You just touch either side of the steering wheel on the little pad and the warning on the dashboard goes away, but that’s the main difference. That’S what differentiates it from what i’ve used. It doesn’t take me that long to get used to it. I got comfortable pretty quick and i trusted it on these roads i mean.
Obviously, i’ve used a car with autopilot before so. Wasn’T that crazy, but the handling of turns was a nice little additional feature to have thanks to the map data. The hard part, though, is gps, isn’t perfect, like maps aren’t even perfect, we all know we’ve all seen apple maps. I even tried uh putting the blinker on near the end of my drive to make a right-hand turn, but that road actually wasn’t on the map. So it just left the right blinker on and kept going. It wasn’t going to slow down.
So i ended up having to take control, hit the brake and make the turn myself. So it doesn’t seem like a big deal. You know it’s the little things you can still do that it’s clearly still evolving it’s level, two, not level five, but the question i have is: will people trust it like? Would you trust it? Obviously, tech enthusiasts like me who trust computers are totally fine with it but uh. Let me know what you think: what do you think of self-driving thanks for watching this one and i’ll talk to you guys, the next one peace .