Level 3: Mercedes-Benz EQS Flagship Sedan

Mercedes-Benz recently launched an online video series called, “Meet Mercedes Digital.” This first episode featured CEO Ola Kallenius, who briefly teased the launch of the Mercedes-Benz EQS sedan in the second half of 2020.

“This is a special year for us. It’s the year where we launch of flagship car, the S-Class. That only comes around every so often…It’s happening in the second half of the year and we’re quite excited about it.”
Ola Kallenius

The EQS is a futuristic luxury vehicle that should be a big shot in the arm for Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz.

They could use it, too. Like most automotive companies, Daimler has been hit hard by COVID-19, with the stock price down nearly 50% this year.

The EQS will be all-electric, all-wheel drive, with a top speed of “> 200 km/h” (125mph).

Most exciting to me, the vehicle will feature Level 3 autonomy. Mercedes doesn’t dance around this term, either. Right in the middle of the vehicle overview, they state:

“The Vision EQS show car supports the driver with highly-automated driving at Level 3, e.g. on longer motorway journeys. Thanks to the modular sensor systems, the level of autonomy can be extended up to fully-automated driving in the future.”

Well, maybe they dance around it a little by writing about the “Vision EQS show car”, instead of the 2021 production EQS. But that is a bold and refreshing statement.

Given Audi’s recent step back from Level 3 technology, due to liability concerns, it will be interesting to see whether Level 3 will be available at launch this fall.

I’m excited to get behind the wheel and take my hands off.

Dominik Nuss at Mercedes-Benz

One of the world-class experts in our Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program!

One of the delights of teaching at Udacity is the opportunity to work with world-class experts who are excited about sharing their knowledge with our students.

We have the great fortune of working with Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America (MBRDNA) to build the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Program. In particular, we get to work with Dominik Nuss, principal engineer on their sensor fusion team.

In these two videos, Dominik explains how unscented Kalman filters fuse together data from multiple sensors across time:

These are just a small part of a much larger unscented Kalman filter lesson that Dominik teaches. This is an advanced, complex topic I haven’t seen covered nearly as well anywhere else.

MBRDNA has just published a terrific profile of Dominik, along with a nifty video of him operating one of the Mercedes-Benz autonomous vehicles.

Read the whole thing and learn what it’s like to work on one of the top teams in the industry. Then, enroll in our program (if you haven’t already!), and start building your OWN future in this amazing field!

Mercedes-Benz and Udacity

Meet some of the people behind the self-driving car revolution!

Mahni is a little spooked by my sunburn.

The Autonomous Vehicle field is full of amazing personalities — people who possess remarkable technical skills and rarefied knowledge, but who are also supremely creative, and incredibly passionate.

The team from Mercedes-Benz is a perfect example.

They’re one of our core partners for our Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program, and they’ve done a remarkable job of not just teaching our students technical skills, but giving them with a real sense of purpose and vision. Perhaps most importantly, they have helped to make complex autonomous vehicle concepts accessible to every single student we teach.

I feel fortunate to work with such great people, and I’d like introduce you to some of them right now! Specifically, Axel, Michael, Dominik, Andrei, Maximillian, Tiffany, Tobi, Mahni, Beni, and Emmanuel!

First, meet Axel. In this video, he shares the history of Mercedes-Benz and autonomous vehicle research, and also describes the type of engineers they are hiring today:

In this next video, Dominik, Michael, and Andrei outline the tools the Mercedes-Benz sensor fusion team uses to combine sensor data for tracking objects in the environment:

Next, Maximillian and Tiffany talk about the work they do on the localization team to help the vehicle determine where it is in the world:

Finally, in this video, Tobi, Mahni, Beni, and Emmanuel outline the three phases of path planning. First, the prediction team estimates what the environment will look like in the future. Then, the behavior planning team decides which maneuver to take next, based on those predictions. Lastly, the trajectory generation team builds a safe and comfortable trajectory to execute that maneuver:

Amazing people, right? Are you ready to join them? Then you should apply to join them at Mercedes-Benz, because they’re hiring!

Not quite ready yet? Then apply now for our Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program! You’ll be joining the next generation of autonomous vehicle experts, and that’s a pretty amazing thing.

Uber and Daimler Build Self-Driving Cars Together

Uber and Daimler are teaming up to build self-driving cars. This is particularly great news for me because Uber and Daimler / Mercedes-Benz are two of Udacity’s best partners for the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree Program. I’m glad we’re all working together.

According to the press release by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick:

In the coming years, Daimler has planned to introduce and operate their own self-driving cars on Uber’s ridesharing network.

This is a new and interesting business model that is a little different than what I’ve seen before.

There has been speculation that some automotive manufacturers like Tesla might launch their own mobility services and compete directly with Uber. And there has been speculation that tech companies like Google might manufacture their own vehicles.

In this case, Mercedes-Benz is still manufacturing the vehicles, and they are retaining ownership, but they are deploying them on Uber’s network.

This might be a way for Mercedes-Benz to learn about ride-sharing from Uber, and for Uber to learn about automotive manufacturing from Mercedes-Benz.