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This is Robby. Robby is a 2016 Audi RS7 that can drive itself—and drive itself hard. As the successor to Bobby, Audi’s original racetrack-circling autonomous RS7, Robby has the edge in weight (it is 881 pounds lighter than Bobby), all the better to rip around at high speeds, shaming human drivers with its cold precision. Robby also has the distinction of being the first self-racing Audi to put tire to track in the U.S. since the autonomous Pikes Peak–climbing TT of a few years ago, having just torn it up at Sonoma Raceway in California.
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Really, the story here isn’t of the RS7’s kind-of-funny name or the issuance of a German passport to a self-driving car for international travel—it’s that weight figure. The 2016 RS7 is merely a refreshed version of the same basic car that first came to the U.S. as a 2014 model, meaning the 881 pounds “Robby” lost relative to old Bobby (the RS7 that tracked Hockenheim last year) came out of its self-driving equipment. Audi has been streamlining its prototype autonomous gear for years, gradually slimming the hardware in its Piloted Driving A6 and A7 prototypes (the A7 is nicknamed Jack, FYI) from a bank of desktop computers and cooling equipment in the trunk to more manageably sized chipsets. With Robby, Audi says a big chunk of the weight loss came from the elimination of redundant visual and mechanical back-up systems; in fact, a human was present in the vehicle, but only to take control should the car’s primary systems require a backup, not to drive.
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- Watch an Audi A7 Drive Away and Park By Itself—Without a Driver
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- Google’s Autonomous Car Can Now Drive at Night Because It Got, Um, Headlights
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- Audi RS7 Research: Full Pricing, Specs, Reviews, Photos, and More
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While it might seem gimmicky to run an autonomous car around a racetrack, we think it’s cool, if a bit unsettling. More important, however, is what Robby’s weight loss means for the progress of Audi’s production-ready Piloted Driving tech, which will debut in the next-generation A8 luxury sedan. As you can probably imagine, nobody wants self-driving technology if it means sacrificing their car’s trunk for a bunch of computers and such, so Audi’s ability to shrink these complex control systems down is nearly as critical as ensuring those systems can safely drive the car.
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When the new A8 goes on sale, its Piloted Driving tech will be capable of fully automatic parking and on-road driving at speeds up to 37.3 mph. (Intended for traffic jams on throughways without traffic signals—the highway—the system will brake, steer, and accelerate all on its own in dense traffic.) To be clear, it will not let owners nap whilst lapping racetracks, but we figure it’s okay if those owners decide to nickname their car Robby, Bobby, or Ricky Bobby.
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