Engineering automotive products throughout the product lifecycle management (PLM) process will be easier as a result of Siemen’s announced acquisition of TASS International, an international supplier of automotive simulation tools, testing services and engineering safety solutions. Global simulation software provider Siemens will enhance its tool integration and expand its autonomous driving and safety simulation capabilities with the acquisition.
The company’s automotive development tools will be integrated and expanded in several areas:
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MADYMO safety design software. (Images courtesy of TASS International.) |
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Safety Analysis—Engineers can analyze, simulate and optimize safety designs early in the product development cycle with the MADYMO analysis and simulation tool. The MADYMO tool combines multibody (MB), finite element (FE), and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) capabilities into a single solver to create a highly efficient tool for the design and analysis of complex dynamic systems. MADYMO provides well-validated model databases, including the most extensive database of crash test dummy models available as well as a human model database that includes active models.
MADYMO provides a workspace that includes a suite of applications to create, refine, simulate and analyze models, and contains dedicated tools for occupant restraint analysis and automatic extraction of New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) safety ratings.
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The automated driving tool suite supports design and testing. (Images of courtesy TASS International.) |
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Automated Driving Simulation and Testing—Engineers can simulate automated driving, and design and analyze Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) with the PreScan simulation platform. Users can design advanced vehicle sensors and controls, and then test them in simulated driving environments with PreScan capabilities such as the automatic traffic generator, German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) importer, and Ibeo scanner data importer.
Engineers can test subsystems independently and as a system with the Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) laboratory testing methodology. Individual subsystems can be replaced with a simulated model or physical hardware connected to the system to test and analyze individual components as well as subsystems and systems. Signals can be projected for driver-in-the-loop testing or injected into the vehicle electronic control unit (ECU). A database of recorded ground truth data, low-level GPS data, and vehicle data can be replayed in an HIL system to test and optimize positioning algorithms.
TASS provides Vehicle-Hardware-in-the-Loop testing. (Image courtesy of TASS International.)
On-Vehicle Testing—Engineers can test any combination of system hardware and simulation models with the Vehicle-Hardware-in-the-Loop (VeHIL) laboratory. Users can model any combination of real and virtual systems or traffic environments with a test vehicle on a roller bench. Wheeled mobile robots test sensor systems such as radar, LIDAR and vision, and can be combined with the roller bench test bed to test components in a system environment.
TASS provides a fleet of test vehicles. (Image courtesy TASS International.)
Fleet Testing—Engineers can test their designs on real vehicles using the TASS test fleet and CarLabs. Standard equipment includes a Denso front radar, Continental radar with 360-degree view, six Ibeo laser scanners, a Mobileye camera, GPS, dGPS, ITS G5 communication, and a fail-safe CAN gateway. Users can rapidly prototype and test new applications with the real-time embedded application platform. They can also test vehicle and environmental interaction on a fully instrumented test site in the Netherlands that provides urban, interurban and highway test areas.
Engineers can accelerate the development of autonomous driving system and safety-critical applications with the integrated tools resulting from this acquisition. They can also design, simulate and test automated driving products throughout the PLM process with the new capabilities the acquisition provides. To learn more, visit the Siemens website.