IDIADA’ s Virtual Proving Ground: a whole new range of testing possibilities
The integration of the IDIADA Spain Virtual Proving Ground (ISVPG) with testing and simulation software has strengthened virtual development and validation activities by offering new virtual scenarios for various applications such as comfort/durability simulations, driving simulator activities and ADAS & Autonomous Driving system development. ISVPG supports development activities by having the most important surfaces of Applus IDIADA’s proving ground in Spain scanned in high resolution.
ISVPG reproduces all the macroscopic unevenness and irregularities of the real surfaces, supporting correlation activities by using an adequate representation of the road inputs. It also helps to gain confidence in simulation and enhances the potential of virtual development of components, control systems and full vehicles. These virtual roads can be used from very early stages of the vehicle development process in order to identify and solve further problems. This saves the financial and time costs associated with on-road/track test sessions & design process.
IDIADA Spain Virtual Proving Ground applications
The continuous development of hardware allows the rapid increase of use cases for the virtual representation of IDIADA Proving Ground. Additionally, more data-centred approaches to engineering are only possible if simulation is in the hub of the development process.
The virtual data is available in several industry standard formats as well as it being possible to build them into customized formats. In the end, the general idea is to allow all potential users of the proving ground to test virtually on the same surfaces by its integration into the major simulation software solutions.
The main applications as well as the usual required formats for each one are listed below by sequential order of development:
- Comfort and Ride analysis using 3D mesh representation of the roads such as 3D encrypted CRG format within MSC. ADAMS/Car (and also RGR format for any cosin compatible application) or Road Surface as rFpro TerrainServer model and VI-grade offline format.
- Active system development and test planning.
- Integration into driver-in-the-loop (DIL real-time systems) using proprietary driving simulator formats representing the complete 3D environment, including the road surface, such as 3D Environment for main Driving Simulator software from rFpro and VI-grade.
- ADAS, autonomous driving system development and validation using High-Definition maps introducing the logics of driving, main road geometries, intersections, etc. such as Opendrive format. If other relevant information is needed, other formats and track characteristics such as signalling or environment information can also be obtained upon request under standard or customized formats.
- Tire development by using very detailed representation of small road sections, such as micro-structural information up to 60 micrometres as contact patch trajectories.
Since 2012, Applus IDIADA has been developing the applications of the data of virtual the Proving Ground. At the same time, our customers have had the opportunity to get access to the data to complement most of the tests performed at the PG. There is still a lot to discover regarding newer applications, such as tire simulations and how to get better integration in the ADAS and CAV related projects.