IAMTS Newsletter #2-2022

ZalaZONE (take away)

By Marijan Jozic

AVL is the world’s largest independent company for development, simulation and testing in the automotive industry, and in other sectors. Drawing on its pioneering spirit, the company provides concepts, solutions and methodologies to shape future mobility trends. AVL creates innovative and affordable technologies to effectively reduce CO2 by applying a multi-energy carrier strategy for all applications – from hybrid to battery electric and fuel cell technologies. The company supports customers throughout the entire development process from the ideation phase to serial production. To accelerate the vision of smart and connected mobility AVL has established competencies in the fields of ADAS, autonomous driving and digitalization.

As IAMTS formed in the spring of 2019, AVL was one of the first organizations to join and soon took up leadership roles in the technical direction for the organization. IAMTS (International Alliance for Mobility Testing and Standardization) is the SAE ITC consortium. AVL is the founding member of IAMTS. Meaning that AVL was involved from day one in IAMTS activities. Tobias Düser, Head of ADAS/AD Virtual Testing Solutions at AVL became involved in IAMTS in the fall of 2019. When you meet Tobias, you will immediately notice that he is very knowledgeable engineer. He is very proud of work he is doing and able to spark other people to become enthusiastic about the work the WG3 is doing.

There are 4 working groups at the IAMTS and AVL is a driving force behind Working Group 3 (WG3). The WG3 is known as: Correlation of physical and Virtual testing and Tobias Düser is the lead of that group since it’s formation in the fall of 2019. Man might say Tobias planted a seed and something big and important for automotive industry is growing. It is good to mention that AVL also participates in other WGs of IAMTS. Just to remind you, other working groups are handling topics like: Cyber security, Test beds and Test scenarios. The latest development within IAMTS is the Study Group 5: Certification of HAV over the whole lifecycle. The study group will as expected evaluate in the Working Group 5.

It is important to mention that WG3 is developing and defining methods and processes to enable virtual testing methods for ADAS/AD validation focusing on the correlation process between the virtual and real world. The methodology, set of general rules and best practices and recommendations is the output of the group. That output should than be used by the industry and regulatory bodies.

The first document produced by the WG3 is document number IAMTS0001202104, which is on the IAMTS web page available for download. The full name of document is “A Comprehensive Approach for the Validation of Virtual Testing Toolchains”. The first sentence of the document describes immediately why we need virtual testing methods. Here is the remarkable sentence from the beginning of the document.

“Autonomous vehicles need to be driven more than 11 billion miles to be 20% better than humans. With a fleet of 100 vehicles, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at 25 miles per hour, this would take 502 years—about a half a millennium.” 

It is important to stop a bit and have a good thought about this quote. The target is to produce a vehicle 20% better than humans. And then the impressive number of testing kilometers needed to be able to achieve that target. In a view of above we now know exactly why we need the new methods and why is WG3 so important. It just can’t be done physically in a reasonable time and therefore we must move to virtual world and totally different type of testing. No doubt that output of the group is needed in automotive industry. Perhaps other industries can also learn from it.

The importance of virtual testing is also the reason why the participants are coming from all corners of the three continents US, EU and Asia. It is global issue, and it should be solved on global scale. They all are realizing that added value is high and they want to be present at the meetings when the history is made. By being in the room when document is created, the contributors can make sure that they are leading and not following the way to new world of testing. Also, they can have the influence on the content. If you are not in the room, you can only accept the document although it might not fit in your own philosophy. Therefore, the message from the IAMTS and WG3 is: Make sure to be involved!

The IAMTS organization is very young but there is no doubt that output of the group is already affecting the industry. Therefore, the IAMTS expects that more members will join and participate. The “WHY” of the IAMTS is more visible and more evident in the industry. Therefore, it is expected that car manufacturers will join the organization soon. That will be however very beneficial for further work of IAMTS and for the whole industry. The automotive world – especially in ADAS/AD validation - is very dynamic. A man might say that the work of IAMTS working groups is never done. That is correct! There are already new projects in the queue. Tobias told us that the first best practices document will be in relation to Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS).

At this moment we are living in time of pandemic and the meetings are virtual. There are some advantages but also disadvantages when living in virtual world. “Face 2 Face” meetings are more expensive due to traveling costs, but the big advantage is that the whole group can sit in the same room and focus on the subject for two or three days. They can keep exchanging the ideas during coffee breaks and lunch which makes the meeting much more productive. Usually, those two days are very exciting and such meeting generates a lot of good ideas and a lot of text for the new document. Hopefully the time will change. WG3 is in good hands with Tobias Düse