Audi has revealed a new livery for its Autonomous TTS Pikes Peak research car, drawing on the look of the original Quattro coupe rally cars of the early 1980s. When the Autonomous TTS was first announced late last year, we were expecting it to be running this weekend in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. The current time-line for the program is to run the TTS up the mountain this fall and then go for a new world land speed record for autonomous vehicles at a yet-to-be-disclosed dry lake bed.

The sensing hardware of the TTS is using a different approach from earlier autonomous vehicles. Instead of the array of cameras, laser and radar, this car is using only high precision differential GPS along with the inertial sensors that are part of the stability control system. Driving is handled by a pair of computers in the trunk with hardware comparable to a laptop. One machine runs the sensing software and safety algorithms while the other handles the vehicle dynamics. The latter is being developed to let the TTS run like a rally car, drifting on gravel corners in order to get maximum speed.

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