Bosch and the Volkswagen Group subsidiary Cariad have agreed to form an extensive partnership to accelerate the introduction of automated driving functions across all vehicle classes. The companies want to make partially and highly automated driving suitable for volume production, and thus available to the broad mass of consumers. For the vehicles sold under the Volkswagen Group brands, the alliance aims to make functions available that will allow drivers to temporarily take their hands off the steering wheel.

More specifically, these functions are Level 2 hands-free systems for urban, extra-urban, and freeway driving, as well as a system that takes over all driving functions on the freeway (SAE Level 3). The first of these functions are to be installed in 2023.

For partially and highly automated driving, the two companies will jointly develop a standardized software platform. The aim is to use this platform in all privately used vehicle classes sold under Volkswagen Group brands—and thus in one of the world’s biggest vehicle fleets. It will also be possible to integrate all the component parts developed by the alliance in other automakers’ vehicles and ecosystems.

The focus of the project’s work will be data-driven software development on the basis of information from 360-degree surround sensing. For this purpose, a development environment will be created for the recording, evaluation, and processing of data. The environment will also make use of AI methods.

The more extensive the pool of data from real road traffic, the more robust and natural the design of the partially and highly automated driving functions can be. This applies, for example, to additional layers for high-resolution maps for the localization and lateral and longitudinal guidance of vehicles. The alliance will also be working on these layers. Moreover, it applies equally to everyday driving situations and to what are known as “corner cases”—the seldom occurring road-traffic incidents that are especially tricky for a system to resolve.

The best proving ground for the development of automated driving is road traffic. With the help of one of the world’s biggest connected vehicle fleets, we will gain access to a huge database. This will allow us to take automated driving systems to a new level. All our customers will be able to benefit from this.

—Dr. Mathias Pillin, president of Bosch Cross-Domain Computing Solutions

This also involves feeding the data gathered in real traffic conditions into the development process—continuously and in real time. Each kilometer driven in real traffic conditions, and the data gathered, evaluated, and processed as a result, means a bigger pool of data and a better basis from which to make even higher levels of automated driving reality and get them safely and reliably onto our roads. The partners have also agreed to examine the possibility of joint development targets and timelines on the path the fully automated driving (SAE Level 4).