The Importance of Virtual Twins in Autonomous Vehicle Development

A new era of effective, economical, clean, and environmentally friendly transportation is being ushered in by driverless, linked cars. According to experts, these systems will revolutionise travel in the upcoming years and influence the development of smart cities, interactive communities, and mobility. 

As they work to achieve these goals, new vehicle innovators and OEM leaders have found that by bringing internal disciplines together on a single collaborative platform, they can outperform the competition, cut costs, and create vehicles that are smarter, safer, and constantly connected. 

Design and development of the vehicle 

The intelligent heart of embedded systems and electronics is where the innovation for cars of the future will find its soul. Innovations in smarter vehicles must handle complexity, improve performance, and guarantee vehicle safety. 

In order to provide end-to-end digital continuity between the various disciplines involved in conceptual design, embedded systems, and software development of the intelligent car, it is crucial to make sure you are employing a system that delivers cutting-edge applications. Systems engineering can be used by automakers to manage the challenging tasks involved in creating smarter, safer, and more efficient vehicles. 

Benefit from the convergence of the virtual and real worlds 

Implementing a virtual twin, or a virtual mirror of components in the manufacturing process, is one technique to advance your innovations in autonomous vehicle deployment. With the use of virtual twins, businesses may strengthen their operational resilience, model, simulate, and test new manufacturing and operational procedures. avoiding time-consuming and expensive physical installation.  

Virtual Twin Experience is an executable virtual representation of a physical system that updates the digital twin model by using lessons learned and experiences gained from real-world operations. 

The full realisation of the advantages to be achieved from the convergence of the Virtual and Real Worlds depends on achieving this closed-loop capacity. 

Human Ergonomics 

While automated driving has the potential to profoundly alter how we travel and enhance our quality of life, it is unclear what our role is in these vehicles. 

As consumer automobiles increasingly come equipped with advanced driver assistance systems that take over some of the driving tasks formerly carried out by the human driver, it is crucial to address human aspects difficulties with automated driving systems. 

Challenges facing Human Behaviour with Automated Driving Systems

Decline in skill: The advent of increasingly autonomous driving systems seems to coincide with a downward trend in the quantity of knowledge and regulations needed. The general belief is that if you drive with these systems on for a long time, you might lose some talent. 

Software shortcomings: Many automated vehicle features exhibit “brittleness” since they are only meant to be employed in specific circumstances. Brittleness is the technical term for a system’s need for human involvement to manage circumstances that the software was not intended to handle, even while the automated aspects of the vehicle work flawlessly under the conditions for which they were designed. 

Driver complacency: Higher levels of automation are known to generate complacency, which encourages drivers to perform non-driving-related activities like talking on the phone or reading on a tablet. The time it then takes for those drivers to restore situation awareness, reenter the driving control loop, and effectively respond to a takeover request may be much longer. 

The job of the driver will continue to evolve as driving tasks become increasingly automated. As a result, the evolving role of the driver must be taken into consideration in investigations and analyses of collisions involving autonomous vehicles.  

In order to ascertain whether the driver’s actions (or inactions) contributed to the collision and whether the system was designed in a way that is consistent with the known capabilities and limitations of drivers operating these systems, crashes involving autonomous vehicles will for the foreseeable future necessitate a human factors analysis and investigation. 

By using a tool like RAMSIS, which accurately simulates car occupants and assesses interior ergonomics, you can ensure a high degree of product maturity and reduce the need for physical prototypes throughout the early stages of the creation of your products. 

Simulate Vehicle interaction with the outside world

Before investing in actual prototypes, simulation gives you the chance to speed up the process of testing the performance, dependability, and safety of materials and products. 

A corporation may go through a digital transformation to go from the physical world of design and prototype testing to the virtual world of digital validation.  

By simulating the physical behaviour of a product in the actual world using virtual prototyping, businesses are able to leverage the ability of testing designs in real-world situations. By using simulation, businesses can improve product quality while spending less on testing materials and prototypes. Simulation helps to improve the effectiveness, dependability, and performance of all driving systems by identifying the best tradeoffs. 

Get in touch

Get in touch today to find out more about how you can address the challenges facing autonomous vehicle deployment with RAMSIS, implement a Virtual Twin to advance your innovations and engage in simulation to transform your prototype testing to ensure you are leading the field.