AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
AUTOMATED DRIVING SYSTEMS
SIEMENS
MOVING TO A DRIVERLESS FUTURE
By Matthieu Worm, Programme Lead
autonomous driving and Robin Van der Made,
Product Manager, Simcenter
The starting point of the vehicle
development process is occupant safety.
Shifting responsibility from driver to
carmaker to prevent accidents has a
major impact on the development
process. Carmakers will have to prove
the thoroughness of their development
processes when people get injured or killed
by wrong manoeuvres from autonomously
driven vehicles.
A key variable in automated driving systems
is sensor configuration. New sensors are
being introduced at a rapid pace and more
advanced sensor fusion algorithms are
being developed. There is an infinite number
of possible compositions to generate a
360-degree image of the environment
around the vehicle, supported by different
sensor types, quantities and positions on the
vehicle. Sensors are typically a significant
cost factor in vehicles, making configuration
selection a potential market differentiator.
Potentially the biggest challenge, however,
is the confidence the vehicle will perform
to its specifications. Not only during the
development stages, but in real traffic with
occupants and for many years. This requires
a validation and verification process that
allows for performance testing in a large
number of circumstances.
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Finally, design decisions and verification
results during the vehicle development
process need to be traceable. To optimise the
vehicle development process, supporting
integrated hardware and software
development with instant optimisation
capabilities for sensor configurations and
with a highly automated and repeatable
validation and verification process is
necessary. It is only scalable for mass
production if the requirements, the system
and simulation architectures, the models
and the performance validation results are
managed carefully.
SYSTEM ON CHIP
The time when automotive electronic control
units (ECUs) are off-the-shelf components
is about to end. The high compute loads
and stringent requirements for low-energy
consumption, combined with the specific
environmental conditions, make it inevitable
that specific chips will be developed for
autonomous driving applications. This drives
the need for the automotive industry to work
much closer with the chip makers and have
parallel product development processes with
multiple interdependencies.
Long development cycles and the high
cost of chip wafers put a stress on this
relationship. However, Mentor, a Siemens
business, supports the chip development
process with virtual and emulated
representations of early stage chip design.
This enables integrated design exploration
and early stage validation and verification
of future system performances with realistic
compute performances. Furthermore,
Mentor simulation solutions can be used
to optimise the thermal and durability
performance.
AD COMPUTE PLATFORM
The autonomous platform covers the
control system hardware configuration.
The system boundaries are the sensors
on the vehicle and the actuator outputs
at the vehicle’s communication bus. It is a
complex assembly of electronics and wiring
that requires optimised calculation time,
energy consumption, thermal performance,
electromagnetic capability (EMC) and
multiple other attributes. Functionally,
the autonomous platform translates an
environment with all kind of actors into
electric signals at the system outputs
that make the car follow the anticipated
trajectory.
Although currently automated driving
solutions like adaptive cruise control,
lane keeping assist and automated
parking systems are typically delivered
as a combined product of sensors and
processors, there is a strong expectation
the car of the future will have a centralised
architecture for a combined array of
functions.
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