BMW lifts lid on its self-driving vehicle tech

The 25W level three unit is quite small but has 10 times the computing power of the ECUs used for the level two, partial automation systems that BMW has offered since last year. 

The 200W level four ECU is many times larger, uses six microprocessors, needs liquid cooling and has 1000 times the computing power of the level two system. 

The fully automated 600W level five ECU prototype has 5000 times the computing power of level two. 

Unlike with some existing ‘self-driving’ systems, the 7 Series test car has a huge array of exterior sensors. It has five lidar scanners – one on each corner and one on the centre of the car’s nose. It is also equipped with radar – long range at the rear – and eight cameras, supplied by autonomy pioneer Mobileye. The boot is packed with computing equipment and “two vehicles’ worth of wiring”. 

The autonomy architecture not only uses the mass of information picked up by the sensors but it is also operating inside a live-updated 3D map of road and surroundings. This map-based ‘environmental model’ is used to create a ‘driving model’ that, BMW engineers say, is based initially on artificial intelligence, then machine learning and, finally, ‘reward and punishment’ learning, similar to that used by children. The information hoovered by the 7 Series mule is a huge two terabytes per hour per car.