Role in the project

ESI Group is a key partner, together with UGE, in the development of the V-HCD platform. Their main tasks are:

• Develop and provide a virtual platform able to simulate driving environment and road actors, in order to allow the project’s partners to accurately simulate and use defined use cases. This solution will support by simulation the validation of the acceptance criteria of connected and automated vehicles by the driver, the passengers but also the other vulnerable road users.

• Assist and train partners to use this platform for the different goals of the project, like driving simulation for acceptance estimation or HMI tests.

• Define and implement simulated use case for the project, including a technologically inspired autonomous car.

Partner description

ESI Group has developed a suite of coherent industry-oriented applications to realistically simulate a product's behaviour, fine-tune fabrication and assembly processes in view of desired product performance, and evaluate the impact of the environment on the use of these products. These applications enable the gradual elimination of tests and physical components and subassembly prototypes during the product conception and manufacturing phases. The virtual prototype of the industrial product thus designed accelerates its certification and allows the monitoring and control of its operational performance, helping industry players to achieve their performance and productivity objectives.

It was logical that ESI would extend its expertise and solutions to the field of connected and autonomous vehicles. This evolution was marked in 2015 by the acquisition of the “Pro-SiVIC” technology, developed within the prestigious French institute IFSTTAR (French Institute of Science and Technology of Transport, Development and Networks), since UGE (Gustave Eiffel University). ESI Pro-SiVIC aimed to allow vehicle manufacturers to test their AD systems by generating synthetic data from a high-fidelity sensor model in an ultra-realistic 3D setting, thereby supporting their certification. Connecting ESI’s existing electromagnetics technology for accurate physics-based modelling of sources and sensors has proven to be a winning strategy and created a truly cutting-edge solution. Today, ESI Pro-SiVIC enables the development of perception systems from initial design to final performance tests.

With the arrival of the newest ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), the industry gets one-step closer to full delegation but nevertheless, it is essential to consider the behavior of the driver when he/she has to manage unknown and critical situations when the safety system hands the control back to them. Adopting a fully virtual approach requires adding a virtual driver and modeling their cognitive behavior and reaction under different circumstances.