“Cutting-edge simulation technology is the foundation for development and validation across all development phases”
Interview with Steffen Schmidt, IPG Automotive GmbH
We interviewed President & CEO Steffen Schmidt on the occasion of our 40th anniversary. In the interview, he addresses why the complexity in vehicle development is constantly increasing and which diverse challenges the industry is facing as a consequence. He also explains which contribution IPG Automotive’s industry expertise gained over decades can make to address these challenges and how he envisions the future of the nowadays indispensable virtual test driving.
“The majority can only be reached with an intuitive access to simulation that delivers results fast.”
Interview with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eric Sax from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
We spoke to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eric Sax from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and interviewed him about the effects of digital transformation on vehicle development. As Director at the Institut fuer Technik der Informationsverarbeitung (ITIV) and at the Research Center for Information Technology (FZI), he provided a multitude of fascinating insights into the current challenges for research, the use of systems engineering and the role of simulation.
“The automotive industry has been changing for years now and software has an ever-growing share in the value creation.”
Interview with Axel Schneider from Continental Engineering Services
The Continental Engineering Services GmbH uses a modern development environment combined with virtual test driving to make vehicle development more efficient with regard to more and more complex software functions while ensuring the greatest test coverage possible. We spoke to Axel Schneider, Senior Engineer for Virtual Testing & Simulation, about his work in the areas of continuous testing, automation and cloud simulation.
“Zero fatalities and injuries from traffic accidents is the ultimate goal of everyone involved in the automotive industry.”
Interview with Hironori Chaya, Toyota Motor Corporation
The Toyota Motor Cooperation continuously works on the advancement of technologies that contribute to reduce the number of fatalities and injured persons in traffic accidents to zero. We interviewed Hironori Chaya from the Advanced Mobility System Development Division about his efforts to estimate the benefit of automated emergency brake systems (AEB) using CarMaker, as well as his vision for future evolutions and improvements in simulation technology.
“We need to revolutionize mobility as we know it by making it clean, efficient, comfortable and affordable.”
Interview with Christoph Funda and Paul Schmidl, Zukunft Mobility GmbH
The Zukunft Mobility GmbH, a competence center of the ZF Friedrichshafen AG operating in the domains of driver assistance, integrated vehicle safety and autonomous driving, developed a HIL system to validate autonomous driving functions. Christoph Funda and Paul Schmidl from the test system development team answered our questions about a prototype for the closed-loop simulation of an autonomous shuttle bus based on this HIL system.
“The driving simulator is an integral component of our development process”
Interview with Eshwar Sondhi, Volvo
Volvo Cars in Gothenburg relies on a driving simulator to test new software and hardware components. Since it allows engineers to subjectively evaluate components’ functionality, the simulator has become an indispensable part of development there. We sat down with Eshwar Sondhi, an analysis engineer in the virtual test environment team, to talk about the role of the driving simulator at Volvo Cars as well as their development process as a whole.
“We’re now more efficient than before by a factor ranging between two and three”
Interview with Christoph Kossira and Dr. Paul Spannaus of EFS
The networking of vehicle systems has become increasingly extensive in recent years and a change in this trend is not on the horizon. We spoke with Christoph Kossira and Dr. Paul Spannaus from Elektronische Fahrwerksysteme GmbH, a joint venture with Audi AG, about their solution for virtually securing ESC (Electronic Stability Control) systems and thus making the development process much more efficient.
“There is nothing in the field of ADAS that is inconceivable in the future”
Interview with Martin Sevenich of Continental
Martin Sevenich already knows part of the future. During pre-development, vehicle functions are tested that won’t be ready for series production for several years. We sat down with Mr. Sevenich to talk about different applications, the technical implementation of studies with test participants in the fields of driver assistance and automated driving, as well as the significance of these tests for the future.
“Nowadays, we can no longer imagine developing vehicles without using simulation tools.”
Interview with Dr. Jochen Schaffnit of Adam Opel AG, August 2016
Dr. Jochen Schaffnit is a Technical Integration Engineer Chassis Controls Simulation in the department of Vehicle Performance Simulation for the automobile manufacturer Opel. We talked to him about the role of virtual test driving in the range of development of vehicle dynamics as well as the entire field of active safety.
“Steering system tuning on the test bench is firmly integrated in our development process”
Interview with Axel Honisch, Timo Schöning and Alessandro Contini of Hyundai
At the Hyundai Motor Europe Technical Center (HMETC) in Rüsselsheim, a steering system test bench is utilized in combination with CarMaker to enable the efficient development, pre-application and validation of steering components. We talked to Axel Honisch, Timo Schöning and Alessandro Contini about their experiences with the test bench and virtual test driving.
"The connected vehicle in all of its manifestations (Car2X), and autonomous driving, which are going to dominate the discussions centered on the automobile and its development."
Interview with Grégory Gackel of PSA
Grégory Gackel is Electronic Integration & Verification Manager at PSA Peugeot Citroën. As part of a project, the department for testing electronic vehicle components equipped existing test systems with a powerful test environment. Of the 44 existing National Instruments test systems, ten were compatible with CarMaker/HIL. The project aim was to achieve the first-ever porting of the software CarMaker to existing NI platforms.
"We want to ensure vehicle safety in all imaginable situations, so it is crucial to test a very large number of scenarios."
Interview with Alexander Frings, Martin Herrmann, IPG Automotive GmbH
The importance of testing and validation in virtual test driving is growing as a result of an increasing number of ECU functions and a nearly unlimited quantity of possible scenarios. In this interview, Alexander Frings (Manager Product Management Engineering Services) and Martin Herrmann (Business Development Manager ADAS and Automated Driving) told us how new possibilities for scenario generation can contribute to the highest test coverage possible.
"We are able to test the entire event chain of the sensors individually as well as within their network."
Interview with Dr. Raphael Pfeffer, Prasanna Kannan, IPG Automotive GmbH
We spoke to Raphael Pfeffer, manager of the “Innovation Management“ team, and to Prasanna Kannan, senior engineer from the “Test Systems & Engineering“ team, about a new modular test platform that enables virtual testing and validation of radar sensors. As a result, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and highly automated driving functions can be validated at a faster pace.
"Perception simulation is becoming increasingly important and has already become an indispensable element to validate autonomous driving functions."
Interview with Martin Herrmann, Dr. Andreas Höfer, IPG Automotive GmbH
In this interview our experts told us how CarMaker 10 supports the development of advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving functions using the Radar RSI sensor model as well as the new visualization tool MovieNX.