ScaleUp 360° Autonomous Vehicle Testing & Validation Europe – the digital event for the automotive industry & automated driving R&D decision makers in Europe. Experience 2 days of virtual sessions and case studies by stakeholders of the latest advancements in the autonomous vehicle testing and validation ecosystem.
In the run-up to the event, we.CONECT spoke with National Instruments Corporation, our Business Partner, about critical problem areas in the context of testing, validating & verifying safety and what their solution has to offer.
we.CONECT: Your solution is announced at ScaleUp 360° Autonomous Vehicle Testing & Validation Europe under the title “Solving the ADAS & Autonomous Driving Test Data Challenge”. What is the most important message to the participants and your clients in the context of handling synthetic & real world data for ADAS/AD testing purposes in a smart and cost efficient way?
NI: Smart approaches to address the data dilemma are critical along the entire End-to-End ADAS & Autonomous Driving Validation Workflow to reduce the overall Total Cost of Data – no single company can solve these challenges on their own, which calls out for an open test software and hardware architecture as well as a vast ecosystem of partners collaborating together.
we.CONECT: What would you highlight as the unique selling point of your solution/approach?
NI: Turly open test software and hardware architecture and being the expert connector to utilize an ecosystem of partners and technology to deliver a solution.
we.CONECT: If you think of your clients’ requirements: Which problem areas in the context of testing, validating & verifying safety-critical ADAS & AD features do you regard as particularly critical?
NI: TThe Automotive Industry is still in a disrupted stage on its way to automated / autonomous driving, as nothing has settled at all. We are trying to change things within a decade, which have been evolving up until today over more than 100 years. The rapid pace of change in requirements, technology, regulation etc. demand flexibility, openness and collaboration, as vehicles are becoming software centric Smart Phones on wheels.
we.CONECT:What do you think are the best (holistic) approaches / technologies to meet these challenges?
NI: Like mentioned before: collaboration will be essential to bring both approaches and technologies together. Software both within the vehicle as well as within our test and validation systems plays a critical role. Why? Because software is the connector between technologies and the only way to evolve and address changes rapidly as they occur.
we.CONECT:How do you assess – also with regard to the participants and speakers of at ScaleUp 360° Autonomous Vehicle Testing & Validation Europe – the developments on the market for solutions for vehicle automation in the next 1-2 years?
NI: The fist hype around fully automated or autonomous driving has vanished, as we have all seen and learned that we do have great technology, but it is still very hard to fully take the driver out of the loop. COVID has certainly done quite a bit of a slowdown on its own, but we have also seen the opposite. Some OEMs and Suppliers have taken the opportunity to accelerate key differentiating development efforts in both vehicle automation and electrification – and we are realizing that we cannot continue the way we have been developing and testing like we did in the last decades. We will for sure hear more about mobility as a whole, than just automated cars, but also here it will take some more time until the change will take effect. Last but not least, all of us need to become evangelists for automated driving to bring the society along, too, because otherwise with no acceptance from the people, autonomous mobility will not happen at all.
we.CONECT: Thank you for the interview! To all our readers, if you are interested and want to join us together with NI and want to learn, engage and discuss automotive tech innovation in real-time with thought leaders across the globe, feel free to sign up for free for ScaleUp 360° Autonomous Vehicle Testing & Validation Europe: https://www.scale-up-360.com/en/autonomous-vehicle-testing-validation/registration