ROAD 2016 The 1st Roundtable for the Purpose of Autonomous Driving
Date : June 17-18, 2016
Venue : Castle Vohlin, Germany
Hosted by Kempten University of Applied Sciences, Nagoya University, Nihon University, AVL, GFFT
(Up&Coming 2016 Summer Issue)

The conference started with the introduction and welcome speeches from the organisers which included many examples of autonomous driving and the research done over the years and a special presentation from Professor Dr Robert Schmidt the head of the University of Applied Sciences, Kempten, Germany. Following the intros we moved into the keynote presentations.

The first was by Professor Dr Ernst Dickmans and focussed on the history of the Autonomous Vehicle Research specifically from when he first encountered the idea of the Autonomous Vehicles in 1987 right through to the present day, the presentation was very technical and focussed on mathematical models and actually how to make the cars fully autonomous using vision detection software rather than radar or lasers. He gave examples of research that was done on this topic that was nearly 30 years old and the developments and improvements in the technology over the years to the present day.

Another keynote speaker was Helmut Fennel he has worked for Continental for most of his career and was one of the pioneers in developing the first ABS systems for cars in the world.

Mr Fennels presentation was again extremely technical based and focussed on his work developing microprocessor applications for use in passenger cars which started in 1978 and was widely in use and in large scale production by 1984. Again this lecture was more of a history of how the car and potential for autonomous driving has developed over the years and developed from ideas such as ABS and how the technology has moved on but also demonstrating that the idea of autonomous driving is nothing new and has been researched for many years.

There were also presentations from Dr Ingo Schymanski and Holger Meinel who is one of the leading experts in the world in the use of Radar especially within the Automotive industry and his lecture focussed on ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and the use of this with Autonomous Driving.

The workgroup/seminar sessions over the two days were an opportunity for people to discuss several topics within the Autonomous Driving spectrum.

This conference was extremely informative and was deemed a success and will be an annual event from now on, hopefully next year will have more attendees and possibly the opportunity for Forum8 to present a paper or case study.


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