Dr. Nico Kampchen is driving on the A9 motorway from Munich to Nuremberg, or rather, he is trying to since, as usual, there is a lot of traffic. However, unlike other drivers around him, he isn’t stressed one bit.

While it could be because he seated inside the soothing cabin of BMW’s new 5-Series, it’s not. Dr Kampchen is conspicuously calm because his car is actually driving itself, accelerating, braking and even overtaking while the driver simply monitors the situation.

Dr. Kampchen is not your average driver: he is the project manager of Highly Automated Driving in BMW’s R&D department and he and his team have already covered nearly 5,000 km (3,110 miles) in the self-driving 5-Series.

The research for electronic co-pilots has been going on for years in Munich, resulting in the BMW TrackTrainer that was tested in systems like adaptive cruise control and emergency stop assistant.

The 5-Series selected for the project has been fitted with intelligent software, vision assistance and environment detection systems. For example, the driver can activate the automated function for motorways with the simple push of a button. From this point on, the 5-Series takes over adapting to the road’s conditions and even allowing other vehicles to merge with the traffic at motorway entries and exits.

This is made possible by the use of the latest technology like lidar (laser radar), ultra sound and video cameras that constantly monitor the environment around the car. The system operates at speeds up to 130 km/h (80 mph), but Dr. Kampchen points out that this is beyond the speed limits in most countries.

Like all of his colleagues in charge of developing similar systems, he says that the driver is ultimately responsible before explaining his next objective:

“The next thing we want to teach our prototype is how to deal with road construction sites and motorway junctions. Construction sites are a big challenge because they take all kinds of forms, making detection, localization and determining the right response quite difficult.”

Ironically, Germany is the one country that drivers can still max out their cars at the famous autobahns. But it’s German companies, like BMW and VW with its TAP, that are on the forefront of rendering drivers useless…

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