PROSIVIC

Manufacturers are continually improving autonomous vehicles with the goal of safely reaching Level 2 autonomy. To achieve that level of safety, departments within OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers who are responsible for evaluating the performance of their sensing software and sensors integrated into the vehicle, must measure how the sensing and intelligence would operate in every required driving situation. But how do they achieve that without having to drive billions of miles of open road tests?

Optimizing safety requires that sensors be integrated into the vehicle. In turn, artificial intelligence (AI) software relies on these sensors for information related to object detection & tracking, path planning, and driving tasks. When sensors lack performance, the phenomena initiates a trickledown effect, ultimately impacting AI performance. Hence the necessity for suppliers of complete assistance systems to simulate sensors with a high level of fidelity, and to run virtual test drives that are highly realistic.

For many, NCAP for Safety Assist is a major selling point and sets performance requirements for the vehicle intelligence systems – this includes sensing performance requirements. Unfortunately, with each new NCAP update, tests increase in number and complexity, requiring tens or even hundreds of driven tests. This makes preparation for NCAP more costly for OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers.  

These challenges only scratch the surface of why Virtual Prototyping is indispensable.

ESI PROSIVIC simulation software offers repeatable tests, access to high-value, real-life driving situations, and full control over simulations, all with zero real prototypes. Additionally, you gain flexibility and scalability for testing, shorter iteration cycles during development, and increased confidence in safety assessments.

Besides simulating vehicle dynamics and traffic situations for decision-making, function performance analysis requires specific simulations of the quality of the sensing data.

PROSIVIC assists with the preparation and execution of such simulations with a straightforward workflow. Users can design their own scenarios using built-in or imported data and create scenario variants of interest for the necessary parametric studies. The sensor hardware characteristics, the mounting settings, and the host vehicle attributes can be modeled. The PROSIVIC platform is open and connects to other simulation tools necessary to simulate certain subsystems (such as sensor fusion or situation analysis, vehicle control, or behavior models). For each evaluation, the data to be monitored and recorded can be adjusted to facilitate results diagnostic as post-processing. Finally, the simulations can be run in a manual or automated way.

ESI PROSIVIC sensor models cover the entire range of hardware equipment available on the market through parametrization. Connected to the user’s sensing processing software, they deliver high-fidelity simulation of sensing data. The parametric approach – for the scene, the behavior of road users, the weather, and sky conditions – provides the freedom to go from common case simulation to the corner cases, which are most challenging for individual sensors.

Key Benefits

• Configurable models of camera, radar, and lidar: 24-77GHz radar, optical camera, and near-infrared laser models
• Access scene libraries with object physics properties for sensors
• Obtain data to measure the in-vehicle performance of the sensing, in operational conditions, and before data from physical tests
• Gather reliable comparison data to benchmark different possible sensing options
• The virtual databases of scenarios improve testing flexibility towards sensing requirement changes during projects and reduces costs of future projects
• Run early, high-fidelity simulations and refine the performance KPIs for the sensing system

PROSIVIC is committed to delivering the highest possible sensor modeling fidelity, which is necessary to prepare for virtual certification. Virtually create assessment tests and measure the sensing performance of the test conditions. The tool flexibility gives you full control over test conditions, such as variants of standardized test conditions or even custom proving ground tests – all decided by the user. After real test runs are carried out, data from real test logs are used to reproduce actual vehicle motions and simplify the understanding of system failures in real test campaigns.

Key Benefits

• Obtain high-fidelity test data (sensing and diagnostic information) with the correct sensors, before the prototype vehicle and equipment hardware have been developed and tested
• Measure the difference between sensing architecture choices (Ex. current vs. new generation of sensors on a vehicle)
• Improve confidence and communication on functionality performance by extending the test scenarios and conditions to cover your own set of proving ground tests
• Reduce the needed number of real tests and the costs related to them
• Capitalize on virtual test databases related to certification across vehicle programs, keeping the knowledge in-house and improving company expertise with difficult situations
• Share virtual databases between development function actors, improving consistency of performance comparisons and trust throughout the testing process