British autonomous technology company Five has partnered with simulation provider Cognata to develop a modular, cloud-based end-to-end testing platform for automatic lane-keeping systems (ALKS).
The companies will integrate technologies to enable companies to scale up testing and development simulations and speed-up performance analysis of ALKS automated driving systems (ADSs).
The co-simulation model has been designed to offer fast ‘in-the-loop’ analysis, thereby enabling developers to quickly explore systems and find ADS weaknesses.
The system will also feature a test oracle measuring ADS performance within a rich, high-fidelity simulation environment, making system failures and marginalities easy to find, triage and analyse.
Furthermore, the technology offers improved scenario detection, ensuring that time and effort is spent only on solving genuine new issues.
The collaboration said combining these features will reduce the need for expensive real-world testing while accelerating the development and assurance of new ADSs.
Stan Boland, CEO of Five, said: “We’re excited to demonstrate how our customers can use our combined platform to materially reduce their R&D overhead for developing automated and fully autonomous driving systems.
“We’ve always been determined to have consumers benefit from the safety and convenience of self-driving. Putting our novel development platform to work for OEM and Tier 1 customers lets us realise that vision for the first mass-produced systems.”
Boland added that the platform will be particularly valuable to OEMs and Tier 1s as they work to meet exacting United Nations Economic Commission for Europe regulations required before they can add ALKS features to consumer vehicles.
According to Danny Atsmon, CEO of Cognata, meeting these regulations required a major step-up in system performance and reliability when compared to Level 2 systems, and demanded more complex validation and verification practices, tooling and workflows, slowing down development while dramatically increasing costs.
“Proving these first Level 3 systems are safe is the challenge of the industry right now,” said Atsmon. “The combination of Five and Cognata’s tooling is a big step in solving that problem.
“Together, Five and Cognata can provide the automotive sector with a significant cost saving and a faster route to market than the US and Chinese tech giants.”
In August 2020, the UK government announced a consultation to enable the use of ALKS on UK roads as early as this year. The response to the consultation is set to be published in early 2021.
