Applications and Potentials

The disruptive change of the future vehicle fleet, new technologies and short development times challenge the entire automotive industry. Every test drive and every test kilometer is cost-intensive and, moreover, in some cases hardly feasible for safety reasons. The goal is crystal clear: to shift development more and more to simulation and reduce the number of prototypes. However, the real driving experience in a road test still offers essential insights for engineers and management. Driving simulators have the potential to bridge these gaps.

They can create the possibility for engineers and test subjects to experience the subjective driving impressions of new functions, systems and driving attributes already in the virtual phase. In order to achieve a comparable driving experience on a driving simulator and thus a comparable evaluation result with the driving test, the methods as well the driving simulator environment must be aligned with the targeted applications and use cases. Kempten University of Applied Sciences has set up a novel dynamic driving simulator from ABD. Together with research and technology partners, technologies and methods are being further developed on this basis in order to achieve the above-mentioned goal. The paper presents potential, methods as well as use cases relevant for chassis development such as for steering, tire, comfort and ADAS/AD development. The paper also gives a first-hand account of the experience.