Munich. The BMW Group’s new Driving Simulation Centre
is taking shape in Munich’s Milbertshofen district. In mid-August, the
company began construction of the world’s most advanced facility for
the simulation of real-world driving situations at the FIZ Research
and Innovation Centre in the north of the city. The new building
provides unique possibilities for virtual testing of advanced driving
assistance systems and innovative display and control concepts. This
will, above all, strengthen the development expertise of the BMW Group
in the field of autonomous driving. A unique feature of the facility
is the high-fidelity simulator, in which longitudinal, transverse and
rotational movements of a vehicle can be represented simultaneously
and therefore very realistically. This allows the BMW engineers to
“bring the road into the lab,” in order to conduct studies just as if
they were taking place in real-world road traffic. For the first time,
urban driving situations – which represent a particular challenge in
the context of autonomous driving – can now also be reproduced
realistically, allowing vehicle responses to be constantly enhanced.
New Driving Simulation Centre is an important component of the
FIZ Future masterplan.
Automated driving is one of
the main technology areas which the BMW Group has designated as being
of central importance in its NUMBER ONE NEXT corporate strategy.
These areas are also addressed to a significant degree by the
expansion of development capacity at the FIZ. Construction of the new
Driving Simulation Centre is part of the FIZ Future masterplan, which
calls for the BMW Group’s central development facility to grow by some
50 percent through several stages up to 2050. The foundation stone for
the first phase was laid in autumn 2017 and now the start of work on
the new Driving Simulation Centre marks a further stage in the
project. It is being built in a central area between the Projekthaus
and the Aerodynamic Test Centre. Covering a total floor area of 11,400
square metres, the facility will comprise 14 simulators and usability
labs employing 157 people. BMW Group Research is planning to start
work here in 2020. The investment in the new Driving Simulation Centre
is estimated at around 100 million euros.
Several decades of experience in the field of driving
simulation.
Advanced driving simulators have become an
indispensable tool, especially for the development and testing of
driving assistance systems and display and control concepts. They
allow the functionality and suitability for customer use of new
systems to be tested in detail while still at a very early stage of
development. The driving simulator serves as a link between the
functional testing of individual hardware and software components on
the one hand and road testing with complete systems on the other. The
BMW Group has many years of experience in using such facilities. Back
in the early 1990s, static driving simulators were employed in the
development of BMW cars. In order to model what happens on the road in
even greater detail, the BMW Group has also operated a dynamic driving
simulator since 2006. In the face of rising demands on the capacity of
these facilities, a further dynamic driving simulator was installed in
the BMW Group Research and Technology House in Garching in 2016.
High-dynamic and high-fidelity simulators for automated
driving functions.
At the heart of the new Driving
Simulation Centre are two innovative driving simulators specifically
designed to meet requirements for testing highly complex automated
driving systems. The new high-dynamic simulator is able to generate
longitudinal and transverse acceleration forces of up to 1.0 g. It is
used to test new systems and functions by replicating highly dynamic
evading manoeuvres, full braking and hard acceleration. An extremely
detailed rendering of real-world driving characteristics is provided
by the second unit, the high-fidelity simulator: braking and
accelerating while cornering, driving in roundabouts and rapid series
of multiple turn-off manoeuvres can be reproduced with high precision
in this simulator’s almost 400-square-metre motion area. This means
that, for the first time, complex urban driving situations – which
present a particularly wide range of challenges for automated driving
systems – can now be replicated under laboratory conditions.
The systems to be tested are fitted in a vehicle mock-up attached to
a platform inside the dome of the driving simulator. Mounted on an
electromechanical hexapod system, the dome can be moved both
longitudinally and transversely by an electric drive while also being
turned. In order to give the drivers a realistic visual experience of
the simulated driving situation, the dome housing the mock-up is
equipped with a projection screen. Precise synchronisation of the
projected driving images with the movements of the vehicle creates a
highly realistic perception of the simulated driving situation, in
which the visual impressions of what is happening on the road and the
longitudinal, transverse and vertical acceleration forces acting on
the test person merge to create an almost flawless overall dynamic
impression. The virtual test drive scenario is completed by a sound
simulation which is also matched precisely to the situation portrayed.
In this way, it is possible to create test conditions which until now
could only be experienced with real vehicles on the road. When seeking
to optimise innovative systems, laboratory testing also has the
advantage that selected driving situations can be repeated as often as
required. This significantly increases the validity of the results.
Furthermore, the driving simulator makes it possible to act out test
scenarios which occur only rarely or under unusual circumstances in
real life, or which would involve risks and so could not be created
for test purposes in a real-world driving environment. Conversely,
findings obtained in the course of real-world road testing can be
checked and validated in realistic laboratory simulation.
New Driving Simulation Centre enables more precise and
efficient testing of complex systems.
The new Driving
Simulation Centre is therefore ideally placed to meet the ever greater
requirements arising from the growing complexity of systems for
automated driving. In future, it will allow different driving
situations to be reproduced in significantly greater numbers and in
more detailed form. Individual aspects of a particular scenario can be
varied and combined freely. This means, for example, that the
configuration of a new driving assistance system can be tested under
different conditions at an early stage in order to find the ideal
balance between a dynamic and comfort-oriented profile before the
first road test has taken place. New display and control systems can
also be tested in a wide variety of situations in order to analyse the
risk of the driver being distracted or the effect of visible, audible
or haptic signals.
In order to establish both the functional reliability of new systems
and their usability, the virtual test drives in the new Driving
Simulation Centre will be conducted not only by the development
engineers and professional test drivers, but also by customers on a
regular basis. Analysis of their driving behaviour in the simulator
and their own subsequent assessment provide important findings for the
development process as it progresses. This means that, long before the
first mile of actual road driving has been performed, the new Driving
Simulation Centre is able to indicate clearly how well a new system
will stand up to the everyday reality of a vehicle’s life on the road.