In the context of the Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio (SFB/TR) "Cognitive Automobiles", vehicles are developed that dispose of cognitive features. Cognitive automobiles have to:

 

• experience themselves and their surrounding area,
• accumulate and structure knowledge autonomous,
• make useful decisions in real time.

Thereby both individual and cooperative perception and acting have to be enabled. "Cognitive Automobiles" drive safer, are more economical and as a consequence are able to give the German automobile industry a long-term technological competitive edge in the international competition.

This SFB/TR has the distinction of both cooperative and competitive structure of Universities of Karlsruhe and Munich. The Chair of Vehicle Technology Munich works on one of totalling 15 projects.

 
The goal of this project is to identify the actual vehicle state and the drivability potential in connection with driving dynamics considering all relevant internal and external factors. Thus, possible driving corridors can be anticipated. Within these corridors, the vehicle is able to drive autonomous in a safe way in connection with driving dynamics. The predicted vehicle stability in connection with driving dynamics is characterized by an index Ks within these corridors. Furthermore the drivability potential in connection with driving dynamics of other vehicles in the surrounding area has to be estimated to realise cooperative decisions and performance between the vehicles. This information is provided to a superior planning instance to calculate the driving trajectory. Thereupon this instance resupplies target defaults and driving commandos for the vehicle actuators. The controller to be developed shall implement these demands robust against parameter-uncertainties and external disturbances. The knowledge of all characteristic vehicle factors hast to be obtained by additional sensors and nonlinear state estimators.