宝马近日宣布，今年下半年将让40辆7系自动驾驶车型在欧美道路上进行测试。这些车基于现行版7系车，将展示由宝马、英特尔和Mobileye面向全自动驾驶所提供的非常先进的技术。去年七月，三家公司宣布进行合作，目前已经开发了模块结构，其他车厂也将采用这一模块结构。宝马在本届消费电子展上除了宣布将进行7系车道路测试外，还发布了5系自动驾驶原型车。这次大规模测试的主要目的是将收集的数据应用于iNext的生产，iNext将取代7系作为宝马品牌的旗舰车型，并预计在2021年实现完全自动驾驶。宝马集团所有品牌随后将推出一系列高度自动化车型。在此次合作中，宝马主要负责“驾驶控制和动态行驶，评估整体周边环境安全性，包括建立高性能仿真引擎，整体部件整合，量产原型车并最终通过与伙伴合作按比例开发平台”。英特尔负责开发高性能电脑部件，而Mobileye负责开发计算机视觉处理器，该处理器负责处理和分析来自360度全景视觉传感器的信息，以及本地化处理。

Autonomous BMW 7 Series test fleet launches later this year

BMW has announced it will launch a fleet of approximately 40 self-driving vehicles on public roads in Europe and the United States by the second half of the year. These vehicles, based on the current 7 Series, will demonstrate the “significant advancements” made by the German company, Intel, and Mobileye towards fully autonomous driving.

The cooperation between the three companies was announced in July last year, and there's already a modular architecture developed, which can be adopted by other carmakers. The announcement was made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where BMW also revealed its self-driving 5 Series prototype.

The main goal for the test fleet will be to gather data, which will be used in the development process of the production 7 Series equipped with autonomous functions. The so-called BMW iNext model will be the foundation for BMW Group’s autonomous driving strategy and will arrive in 2021. It will be followed by range of “highly automated models” from all BMW Group brands.

The Bavarian brand is responsible for “driving control and dynamics, evaluation of overall functional safety including setting up a high performance simulation engine, overall component integration, production of prototypes and eventually scaling the platform via deployment partners.” Intel is bringing high-performance computing elements, while Mobileye contributes with processing and interpretation of input from the 360-degree surround view vision sensors as well as localization.