A 'cookbook' for vehicle manufacturers: Getting automated parts to talk to each other

Automation will increasingly allow vehicles to take over certain aspects of driving. However automated functions are still being fine-tuned, for example, to ensure smooth transitions when switching between the human driver and driverless mode. Standards also need to be set across different car manufacturers, which is one of the goals of a project called L3Pilot. Although each brand can maintain some unique features, automated functions that help with navigating traffic jams, parking and motorway and urban driving must be programmed to do the same thing. 'It's like if you rent a car today, your expectation is that it has a gear shift, it has pedals, it has a steering wheel and so on,' said project coordinator Aria Etemad from Volkswagen Group Research in Wolfsburg, Germany.