Enhancing automated driving systems with artificial intelligence
InnoDrive is a popular driver assistance system in the Porsche portfolio. Artificial intelligence plays a key role in the data-driven development of the solution, while at the same time offering great potential for the future of automated and autonomous driving.
Porsche is — and always has been — a brand well known for offering exceptional driving performance. A great emphasis is placed on creating an exciting and engaging experience, and it’s for that reason that a Porsche will most likely always have a steering wheel. But what does this mean with the advent of automated and autonomous driving?
“In everyday life, there are still scenarios in which the customer might want to delegate the task of driving to the car,” says Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bortolazzi, Head of Driver Assistance and Automated Driving at Porsche AG. “Nobody wants to spend hours sitting in start-stop traffic, for example. It’s in these situations that we see great potential for automated driving and are therefore developing leading solutions such as InnoDrive.”
What is InnoDrive?
InnoDrive is a driver assistance system that uses high-precision navigation data as well as cameras, radar, and ultrasound sensors to automatically accelerate and decelerate the vehicle. Having been in continuous development since 2009, the function has established itself as the frontrunner in the area of assisted and automated driving at Porsche. It’s also a very popular function among customers. InnoDrive is available in the 911, Panamera, Cayenne and Taycan, and can be ordered in nearly 30 European countries as well as in the USA and Canada.
Like other assisted and automated driving systems, InnoDrive operates on the sense-plan-act principle. This means that the vehicle first uses its onboard sensors to perceive its environment and identify any relevant objects and obstacles. These might include speed limits signs or surrounding traffic, for example. The vehicle then determines and prioritizes possible driving maneuvers before carrying out the selected maneuvers.
“InnoDrive uses an optimization algorithm that takes into account known speed limits, the course of the road and vehicles in front,” explains Florian Schröder, Function Owner of Porsche InnoDrive at Porsche AG. “Based on these factors, the system calculates an efficient speed curve that also corresponds with the selected driving program. What makes InnoDrive so special is that it’s calibrated to behave in a much sportier manner than other driver assistance systems, therefore still maintaining the much-loved spirit and character of Porsche vehicles.”
InnoDrive provides great benefits for driver comfort and safety. But it also offers advantages in the area of sustainability: with the ability to look ahead and understand exactly where the upcoming corners, stopping points and slopes are located, the system can make the drive even more efficient.
Where is artificial intelligence used in InnoDrive?
Porsche is increasingly utilizing the potential of artificial intelligence, a technology without which the further development of driver assistance systems like InnoDrive would be inconceivable.
One particular benefit of AI in the area of automated driving is in the processing of gathered data. As the various vehicle sensors perceive and map the surrounding environment, they collectively generate a huge amount of data which must be processed both in the vehicle (onboard) and in the cloud (offboard). Detected objects must be classified in real time and labelled as vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, for example.
AI is essential to quickly and efficiently sort through large volumes of data and extract the relevant information — a task that would be unmanageable with conventional methods alone. The technology can also be used to help the system more quickly detect objects and anomalies using cameras even in poor visibility conditions, or to more accurately predict when the vehicle in front is about to turn.
But it’s not just about improving the function in an objective, performance-based sense. AI also plays a key role in drawing conclusions from customer usage behavior. In a data collection campaign carried out in close collaboration between various technical departments at Porsche and the fully-owned subsidiaries MHP and Porsche Digital, more than 6,500 customer Taycans covered a distance of more than 340,000 kilometers — equivalent to more than eight times the circumference of the Earth — and generated 3,700 million data points. Far greater than the previous benchmark for Porsche InnoDrive, this represents a data pool from which valuable information can be extracted using AI-based methods.
“By analyzing exactly how and where InnoDrive is used in the real world, AI technology can detect patterns and collect insights,” says Dr. Benedict Seiferlein, Senior Manager Autonomous Driving at MHP. “This provides Porsche with a better understanding of the customer and allows developers to optimize the feature in a more targeted manner. There may be particular kinds of roads where the function is more frequently activated or even market-specific differences in terms of user preferences, for example.”
Future developments of driver assistance systems at Porsche
As AI-based methods must always comply with all product and usage safety regulations, it’s unlikely that there will ever be a complete, end-to-end AI-based system in production vehicles. Instead, artificial intelligence will be applied at specific points in the sense-plan-act chain of effects to support and refine conventional control methods, and will always be embedded in a conventional safety system.
But that’s not to say that AI will be very strictly limited. On the contrary, it’s clear that artificial intelligence is central for the data-driven development of Level 3 automated driving systems and beyond.
At Porsche, InnoDrive acts as an enabler for the development of other upcoming driver assistance functions such as hands-free driving. Therefore, by assisting the further development of this system, artificial intelligence is also paving the way for those future solutions, too. Findings from the current use of InnoDrive will be used to define the next generation of driver assistance functions in a customer-centric way from the very beginning.
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About this publication: Porsche is one of the most successful sports car manufacturers. But there’s more to it. Innovation is deeply rooted in the company’s DNA. We started out as a small garage startup more than 75 years ago — today, we build some of the most exciting sports cars in the world. But we can’t shape the future of mobility alone. We have to broaden our horizons, open ourselves up as a company, leave our comfort zone, dive into new technologies and collaborate with new partners. Here, we tell these stories.
