Oktoberfest

Markus Lienkamp has the latest successes ready on his smartphone. “We’re now overtaking too,” says the professor of automotive engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TU) with pride. On the screen, a racing car is whizzing along the curve, the car speeding down the track. Since 2021, Lienkamp’s chair has been taking part in the “Indy Autonomous Challenge”, an international racing series for autonomous driving, and the TUM team has already climbed the winner’s podium several times.

Things are not going to be quite so fast this Wednesday. “The know-how we gained there helped us enormously, however,” says Lienkamp, ​​whose jacket is a little jacket with the inscription “MCube@TUM”. In front of the entrance to the Oktoberfest stands “Edgar” – an autonomous car with cameras on the roof and sensors around the headlights. Lienkamp and his team developed the vehicle as part of the Munich Cluster for the Future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions (MCube), and now it is to transport passengers for the first time as the “MCube Wiesn Shuttle”. The offer is valid for two days, up to and including Thursday, September 26, “Edgar” will drive along the edge of the Theresienwiese and the southern main station.

The Wiesn shuttle should be placed in a larger context, says Lienkamp. MCube consists of 14 individual projects whose common goal is to represent the entire spectrum of urban mobility in Munich – and to explore new forms in the process. “It’s not about taking away people’s cars,” he stresses, but rather to show alternatives. In the USA and China there are already companies that have autonomous vehicles on their premises, but in Europe he is not aware of any company that has mastered the technology. “We have shown that we can do it,” says the Wiesn shuttle project manager.

MCube was launched in 2021, and Lienkamp and his colleagues have been working on the actual vehicle for a year and a half. They expanded “Edgar” and equipped it with sensors, determined computing power, programmed the software and then “practiced with it for weeks and months,” says Lienkamp. A special feature is that they are making all of their research available to the public. Anyone who wants to can view and copy the source codes used on the Internet. Collaborations with other universities and two – as yet secret – automobile companies are also planned for the future.

Without a fixed stop or route, “Edgar” is comparable to a shared taxi with space for six people – it just doesn’t need a driver. To intervene in an emergency, there is currently always a person at the wheel. Since this is a prototype, the costs are in the six-figure range; series production will probably cost significantly less.

In Munich, there is no shortage of buses, but of people who can drive them, says Mayor Reiter

It will probably be a while before that happens. Although “Edgar” has already made its rounds in a university setting, the first public test drive took place this Wednesday. One of the first passengers is Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD), but for his journey to Theresienwiese he still relies on a flesh-and-blood chauffeur. There are no two opinions about autonomous driving, he says in his welcome: “That is the future.” In Munich, there is no shortage of buses, but of people who can drive them. Some routes cannot be driven due to a lack of staff. An autonomous shuttle is therefore a welcome glimpse into a possible future. “So that former national goalkeepers can also keep their driving license,” he adds with a grin. At the beginning of the week, Jens Lehmann was stopped by the police while heavily intoxicated; the former goalkeeper of the German national team had spent the evening at the Oktoberfest.

Markus Blume (CSU) is also in good spirits. The entire world public has gathered on this day, enthuses the Science Minister, while behind him the dense stream of visitors rushes to the site. Nothing embodies the slogan “Home and High-Tech” more than autonomous driving at the foot of the Bavaria, says Blume. Getting around the Oktoberfest is complicated enough even for humans, so it must be all the more difficult for artificial intelligence. “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere in the world,” he says.

The MCube project will run for another three years, and the test drive of the Wiesn shuttle is just an interim result. Markus Lienkamp expects that autonomous vehicles could be on the roads from 2030. Until then, there are videos on the Internet.