Quartet collaborate on ADAS test solutions

The companies describe the collaboration as a unique commitment to fully autonomous vehicles. They say it offers a unique approach for ADAS testing, joining their knowledge and skills to develop highly scalable future-proof ADAS test solutions based on the standardised National Instruments (NI) platforms.

The ADAS IIT group is the first to present cost-optimised consolidated ADAS test solutions for virtual test drive combining; sensor fusion, Hardware in the Loop (HiL) testing system, V2X communication, GNSS simulation and integrated data management systems.

This unique NI platform based concept will help bring autonomous vehicles to the market safer and faster than expected.

„We are pleased to see NI’s open platform and ecosystem empower the four ADAS IIT engineering companies to address the increasing testing complexity of highly integrated, fully automated ADAS HIL test solutions, covering sensor fusion and target simulation as well as V2X communication and GNSS simulation.”, says Rahman Jamal, Global Technology & Marketing Director, National Instruments. “The combination of our flexible software like NI LabVIEW, modular hardware platform like PXI and the ADAS IIT’s deep technical expertise ensures that our common customers will get the cutting-edge technology they need to speed up the research and development of autonomous vehicles.”

The four companies bring a range of expertise to the enterprise.Konrad Technolohies contributes ADAS Sensor Fusion, SET brings HiL skills, V2X Communication and GNSS Application is a speciality of S.E.A. Datentechnik. Data Management from measX forms a complete, flexible set of tools from design to development, implementation, and validation to production.

The companies agreed to collaborate on the research and development of a seamless one-stop solution designed to make autonomous driving even more predictable and safe; a solution providing a significantly more robust and capable architecture across the automotive industry that simplifies and shortens development times for automobile manufacturers.

“The demand for fully autonomous vehicles requires efficient test systems not just for RADAR or LIDAR sensors but a Sensor Fusion technique that synchronously combines inputs from all car sensors. We thrive to provide ideal solutions for testing Sensor Fusion which offers timing, triggering, validation and synchronization capabilities all in one. A combination of these technologies with HiL, V2X, and highly efficient data management systems will go a long way to set very high standards in the automotive industry, and I am very excited that ADAS IIT is at the forefront of these technological innovations.” Michael Konrad, Managing Director of Konrad Technologies.

“As real test drives are highly time-consuming, require a lot of test driver resources, and cannot be repeated to 100%, virtual test drives are inevitable to test today’s sensors and sensor fusion electronic control units (ECU) for the future autonomous driving. Therefore, we bring in our domain expertise regarding highly complex, innovative ADAS HIL test solutions and are thrilled to be part of this leading cooperation.” Frank Heidemann, Managing Director of SET.

“V2X is becoming an integrated part of future vehicles and ADAS systems. Testing along the development chain requires the in-depth expertise of RF and V2X protocols, as well as system interaction with other sensors like GNSS, RADAR or LIDAR. Respecting these requirements S.E.A. has decided to cooperate closely with leading NI partners adding new core competences to provide on-the-edge test systems and development support world-wide.” Dr. Gerd Schmitz, Managing Director of S.E.A. Datentechnik.

Testing of multiple ADAS sensors as well as complete vehicles in real situations produces a lot of data which need to be transformed into information. MeasX as a long-term specialist in technical data management and analysis is proud to bring in its expertise into this cooperation.” Dr. Joachim Hilsmann, Managing Director of measX.

The ADAS IIT – Innovation In Test collaboration is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.

Upon final agreement, more than 300 engineers in Europe, Asia and USA will work on the next steps towards a complete test of fully autonomous vehicles in a virtual environment, from design to development, implementation, validation to production and testing services around the globe.