试驾奔驰次世代自动驾驶汽车

    扣好安全带后，这辆车就悄无声息地启动了。现在想来，雷曼在试驾中从来没有碰过那个小小的方向盘，也没踩过油门或刹车。当车子在宽阔的路面上划弧时，我突然产生了一种在游乐园坐旋转木马的感觉。车子行驶了几圈后，雷曼按下了座椅旁边的一个按钮，把他的座椅转向了后边，然后建议我也这样做。

    既然未来就是这样的，我又何乐而不为呢？所以我们都把座椅转了过去，面对着后排座位上的两名乘客。这时我们的感觉就好像坐在酒店的大厅里交谈一样——除了汽车仍在行驶，尽管它的移动速度一直没有超过每小时25英里。一股无法扼制的欲望驱使着我不时地回头观察前方路况，一遍又一遍。

    随着车子继续行驶，我们又把注意力转移到了汽车的内饰上。奔驰的代表喜欢把这辆原型车称作“茧”，意思是说它就像一个舒适的私人寓所。没有了盯着路面的负担，驾驶员可以在行驶的过程中放松一下，把车子当成私人卧室来打个盹，或是看看书、玩玩安装在几乎每一个平面上的触摸屏。

    这些触屏上显示的是什么呢？有巴黎卢浮宫的360度全景照片，还有森林田园风光。理论上，车主可以在旅行的过程中向乘客炫耀一下他旅行的照片、放放电影、搜索一下附近的自驾旅行景点信息，或是给朋友打个视频电话什么的。

    不过其中很多功能目前还仅仅停留在理论上。奔驰公司也坦承，我们试乘的这款概念车的功能还不充分。它更多是一种灵感的启迪，告诉我们当所有监管和技术问题都解决之后，未来的汽车会是什么样子。实际上，在城市道路中驾驶这辆汽车是违法的，因为它目前还缺乏充分的自主性（它的驾驶系统是专门根据这个空军基地设计的），而且也没有安装气囊等必要的安全措施。

    奔驰公司的确也有一些已经在公路上经过合法测试的无人驾驶汽车。不过它们都是现有量产车型的改款，缺乏F 015这样的视觉吸引力。

    F 015的一些高科技“魔法”显然还在持续改进中。比如，为了更好地与行人进行沟通，奔驰设计了一套“灯光语言”。如果车子接近正在等候过马路的行人，它会自动停下来，使用镭射灯发出类似绿灯一样的信号，让行人先过马路。目前的问题是，在日光下很难看见这种信号。

    在未来，正如奔驰公司预见的那样，随着城市人口变得愈发拥挤，汽车与行人共享空间的情景将变得更加普遍。为了尽早应对这种状况，奔驰正在畅想怎样做才能对车辆和行人更安全、更方便。不管怎么说，无人驾驶技术正在慢慢发力。许多量产车型已经搭载了防碰撞系统、自动驻车和巡航控制系统等基本的无人驾驶功能。

    但完全的无人驾驶汽车要想投入商用，还需要很多年的时间。即便是到了那个时候，法律也不太可能允许驾驶员把座椅转向后方，并不是说驾驶员自己不想。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    审校：任文科

    After buckling our seat belts, and with little fanfare, the car started to slowly roll across the pavement. Lehmann never touched the tiny steering wheel, which seemed like an afterthought, or used the gas and brake peddles. I felt like I was on an amusement park ride as the car made arcs across the vast expanse of open pavement. After we made a few loops, Lehmann pressed a button on the side of the seat to swivel his chair to face backwards and suggested I do the same.

    This is the future, so why not? And so we spun around to face two fellow passengers in the back seats. We talked like we were sitting in a hotel lobby—except the car was still moving, albeit probably never faster than 25 miles per hour. I repeatedly felt an uncontrollable urge to turn my head and peek ahead to make sure the route ahead was clear. I gave in, over and over.

    As we moved along, we turned our attention to the car’s interior. Mercedes representatives liked to describe it as a “cocoon,” suggesting a sort of private retreat. Unburdened from staring at the road, drivers can instead relax during rides and use the car as a personalized living room for napping, reading, or futzing with the touch screens installed on nearly every flat surface.

    And displayed on those screens? Photos showing a 360-degree panorama of the Louvre museum in Paris and bucolic forest scenes. In theory, car owners could show off their vacation photos, play movies, get information about potential sightseeing side trips nearby, or make video calls with friends.

    Much of that is purely theoretical at this point. Indeed, the concept car isn’t really fully functional, Mercedes acknowledges. It’s more of a source of inspiration that assumes all regulatory and technical hurdles have already been worked out. In fact, driving the car on city streets would be illegal because the car lacks full-autonomy (it was programmed specifically for the airfield) and is without some required safety features like air bags.

    Mercedes does have driverless cars that it legally tests on public roads. However, they are modified production cars that lack the visual pizzaz of the F 015.

    Some of the F 015’s high-tech wizardry is clearly still being worked on. For example, Mercedes has come up with a sort of light show to a better communicate with pedestrians. If the car comes across people waiting to cross the road, it stops and uses a laser to project what looks like a green crosswalk on the street as a signal to walk. The trouble is that such a light show would be invisible in daylight.

    As Mercedes sees it, in the future, cars and pedestrians will increasingly share the same space as cities become more densely populated. The company is hoping to prepare by imagining what it can do to make it safer and more convenient. In any case, driverless technology is slowly gaining momentum. Many production cars already feature more basic versions like collision avoidance systems, automated parking, and cruise control that keeps cars in their lanes.

    But fully autonomous vehicles are still years away from being commercially available. And even then, it’s unlikely that laws will allow drivers to swivel their chairs away from the road. Not that they won’t crave a look.