Interviews
Dr. Andreas Höfer
IPG Automotive GmbH
"The time required to approve the entire toolchain has been significantly reduced."
With the ISO 26262 certification of CarMaker, IPG Automotive has reached an important milestone in terms of functional safety. Henning Kemper spoke to Dr. Andreas Höfer, Senior Vice President of Development & CTO, about what makes this step so important for customers, and what requirements had to be met to achieve it. In the interview, he also explains how a certified tool can reduce development effort and why formal proof plays a crucial role in highly automated driving functions.
Meena Kumari and Anton Albinsson
Polestar Performance AB
"We will see a drastically reduced dependency on physical test vehicles"
Polestar is using a new type of combined Brake- and Steering-in-the-Loop test system developed in close collaboration with IPG Automotive. We spoke to Meena Kumari and Anton Albinsson, engineers in the Vehicle Motion Control Team at Polestar, about the role of simulation in the company, the benefits they expect to generate for development, and the purposes for which the test system will be used.
Steffen Schmidt
IPG Automotive GmbH
“Cutting-edge simulation technology is the foundation for development and validation across all development phases”
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.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eric Sax
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
“The majority can only be reached with an intuitive access to simulation that delivers results fast.”
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.
Axel Schneider
Continental Engineering Services
“The automotive industry has been changing for years now and software has an ever-growing share in the value creation.”
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.
Hironori Chaya
Toyota Motor Corporation
“Zero fatalities and injuries from traffic accidents is the ultimate goal of everyone involved in the automotive industry.”
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.
Christoph Funda and Paul Schmidl
Zukunft Mobility GmbH
“We need to revolutionize mobility as we know it by making it clean, efficient, comfortable and affordable.”
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.
Eshwar Sondhi
Volvo
“The driving simulator is an integral component of our development process”
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.
Christoph Kossira and Dr. Paul Spannaus
EFS
“We’re now more efficient than before by a factor ranging between two and three”
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.
Martin Sevenich
Continental
“There is nothing in the field of ADAS that is inconceivable in the future”
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.
Dr. Jochen Schaffnit
Adam Opel AG
“Nowadays, we can no longer imagine developing vehicles without using simulation tools.”
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.
Axel Honisch, Timo Schöning and Alessandro Contini
Hyundai
“Steering system tuning on the test bench is firmly integrated in our development process”
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.