Developing Applications for Automated Driving Using a Measurement Vehicle in dSPACE Design

Paderborn, March 24, 2022. dSPACE is working tirelessly with the automotive industry to make the dream of autonomous driving come true. Now, the Paderborn-based company is sending a sensor vehicle with a dSPACE design out onto the roads to record traffic data. The information collected is intended to help test the safety of driving functions that can be used to autonomously steer future cars through traffic.

Long before self-driving cars, shuttle buses, or delivery trucks hit the road, driving functions are tuned, developed, and tested for all possible traffic situations. How must the vehicle behave in interaction with other road users? What must it do when a ball suddenly rolls onto the road? How does the vehicle navigate independently in multi-lane urban traffic? In order to develop the driving functions for such situations, real-life situations are required, which are then later run through again and again in simulations.

The sensor vehicle, which is equipped with nine video cameras as well as lidar and radar sensors, and a high-precision GPS sensor, records such situations and stores the data on a data capture system in the vehicle. “Of course, we comply with our data protection obligations in the process. All data that we process further is anonymized using special software. Individuals or license plates can no longer be identified in the data anonymized in this way," says project manager Nikolas Hemion.

The anonymized data can be used to train systems based on artificial intelligence. In addition, the data can be used to develop new software applications in the field of autonomous driving.

The new vehicle in the dSPACE design will not only be used for measurement drives. dSPACE also wants to use it at trade fairs to demonstrate its expertise in the field of autonomous driving.