► Autonomous car based on 1965 Mustang
► Driving itself up the Goodwood hill!
► Joint project with Cranfield University
A Siemens-backed autonomous 1965 Ford Mustang completed its run up the infamous hillclimb at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed, but the ride wasn’t quite as smooth as expected.
The first run up the hill (the Mustang is planned to go up the hill every day of the festival) saw the self-driving Mustang weave up the route – even on the straight sections – and even narrowly missed clipping one of the hay bales. The safety driver inside regularly had to grab the wheel in order to straighten the car up. Watch the video below to see the run, from around 05m 0s onwards:
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‘We’ve partnered with Cranfield University to bridge the gap between the legacy of the automotive industry while pointing to the future of autonomy in terms of both motoring and wider industrial applications,’ said Juergen Maier, CEO of Siemens in the UK and Ireland.
Unlike the Roborace car, which will be collecting and processing data in real-time to get up the hill, the Siemens Mustang will use a pre-prepared 3D representation of the track, created using location scanning technology from Bentley Systems. That means it’ll simply keep the same path programmed, rather than decide ad-hoc on the fly.
And as for the wrap? The Mustang has been finished in silver to commemorate the Festival of Speed’s 25th running.
Read our guide to the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed here