The Indian automotive industry is experiencing a significant increase in demand for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) due to the need to improve road safety and driving convenience. However, unlike developed countries, the country faces significant challenges of poor road infrastructure, such as the lack of standardized signage and lane markings, which are prerequisites for the reliable functioning of sensor fusion-based safety technology. facing.
Therefore, developing ADAS for the Indian market will have to adapt to these unique road infrastructure challenges. This includes accounting for varying road conditions, unpredictable traffic patterns, and dealing with lack of lane markings. ADAS technology must be robust enough to handle different driving environment scenarios and provide accurate and reliable assistance to the driver.
Ramanathan Srinivasan, Managing Director of Automotive Test Systems (ATS) said, “India’s ADAS technology needs to be tailored to the Indian situation and developing an ADAS for the Indian market requires a country-specific We need to adapt to the road infrastructure challenges of the world.”
“Unlike emissions testing, ADAS testing and validation is a very complex task as it requires evaluating almost 200,000 scenarios on the track or in simulation. Given that, the focus should be on data collection and scenario generation,” he added.
“ADAS functions are likely to be democratized. Dr. Ramanathan Srinivasan, Automotive Test Systems (ATS)
At a technical presentation on “Development of ADAS for the Indian context” auto car professional Mr Srinivasan of the Road Safety Council said India has adopted the Euro NCAP test protocol as the standard for ADAS testing as defined by the Euro NCAP test protocol which has its own tendencies to European conditions as there is currently no regulatory framework binding ADAS technology in vehicles. I pointed out that I have been referring to the standards that exist.
“However, our driving environment is very different from Europe, so we need India-specific regulations that focus on the challenges faced on Indian roads. We need to create a national database of accident scenarios in India. and OEMs and technology providers need access to this data to test and validate ADAS technology in the Indian context,” Srinivasan said.
Data collection and use cases in the Indian market
ADAS systems work by fusing data from various sensors, such as radar, lidar, and ultrasonic sensors, as well as cameras, to sound an alarm in an emergency and to help drivers control the vehicle to prevent accidents. To do. It depends on the level of autonomy provided. According to Srinivasan, “Forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, lane-keeping assistance, automatic parking, and driver drowsiness detection are early use cases for his ADAS in Indian cars, and OEMs are developing radar and camera I have several modules.”
“Currently, companies are offering these safety features in more advanced versions of their products, but over time, ADAS features may become commonplace. We are working on it, so the question is when to implement it in line with the situation in India,” he added.
Srinivasan said the data needed to test and validate ADAS functionality is provided by advanced equipment such as stereo cameras, IMUs and a holistic intelligent system that can record data not only about the vehicle but also about its environment and other people around it. I explained that I could only collect “The next step is to filter out the irrelevant scenarios and focus on the critical scenarios that the vehicle needs to react to. It is necessary for testing and validating ADAS technology,” he said.
“Since we have fast computers that can process multiple commands together, simulation is increasingly enabling us to test and validate ADAS technology in the virtual world. Leverage individual subsystem models such as tire, steering, and brake models.” By doing so, simulation tools can be used to test and validate ADAS functionality,” added Srinivasan.
ADAS technology testing and validation
Once the accident scenario is generated, it needs to be run in the virtual world for testing and validation of the ADAS technology. “It is impossible to physically test more than 200,000 scenarios on a track, so we start with simulation. We are working on creating an algorithm that can be created for any scenario,” Srinivasan explained.
Virtual evaluation of this system requires interfacing scenarios with virtual sensors, and once that is done, the combination of sensors in question is evaluated to detect, recognize and analyze possible accident situations and whether a collision can be avoided. is evaluated. Warning or take over control.
For example, for the virtual evaluation of automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems, time-to-collision (TTC) measurements are the most accurate in a variety of vehicle conditions (vehicle stationary or vehicle ahead decelerating). It’s one of the important aspects. Gradual or sudden slowdown. “To ensure foolproof functionality, he tests and validates only one ADAS function with several variations,” Srinivasan noted.
Multidimensional testing approach
ADAS testing requires bringing different models into the virtual world. Models and sub-components such as chassis and powertrain components should be as realistic as possible and reproduce vehicle dynamics in the virtual realm. Using simulation software, or what ATS calls a “plant model,” all such subcomponent models and their engineering data can be brought into the simulation tool. Mr Srinivasan said: “Another important aspect is the incorporation of different driving behaviors into the software by driver models. This is important for determining the ADAS subsystem response under different driving styles. It provides integration of all vehicle subsystems, including ADAS, powertrain and chassis components, and quickly tests and validates algorithms and sensor choices in the virtual world itself.”
ADAS testing and validation processes include multi-dimensional testing approaches that combine real and virtual worlds in parallel with different setups such as hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and software-in-the-loop (SIL). ), model-in-the-loop (MIL), and vehicle-in-the-loop test architectures to evaluate ADAS subsystems across 2,00,000 possible accident scenarios. A driver-in-the-loop (DIL) setup, where a human rides a driving simulator, further enables his six degrees of freedom for evaluating and validating ADAS functionality.
The final stage in the testing process for ADAS technology is physical verification on the ADAS test track. Since ADAS test tracks are at least six lanes wide and Indian roads are prone to multi-vehicle interaction, ATS aims to simulate multi-vehicle interaction via a “swarm test”. It will be held at the upcoming ADAS test course in Telangana. “This is what we are trying to build not only at NATRAX, but also at our future laboratory in Telangana,” Srinivasan concluded.
‘We are spending around Rs 250 crore on ADAS test track in Telangana’: ATS
As there is currently no physical ADAS test infrastructure in India, ATS has developed an urban scenario to test and validate life-saving technologies that provide reliable functionality under various scenarios on Indian roads. recognized the need for such a facility that would allow simulation of
Dr. Ramanathan Srinivasan of ATS said: “We plan to invest around Rs 200 crore to Rs 250 crore in our new EV and ADAS facility in Telangana which will house one of our state-of-the-art trucks for ADAS testing and development in India. The ADAS truck will be operated in collaboration with ATS and Germany’s TÜV Rheinland and will also provide ADAS certification services for Indian-made vehicles for overseas markets.”
Although the new facility, which is expected to span 125 acres, will take at least two years to complete, ATS has already set up an ADAS laboratory at NATRAX in Indore and has begun basic testing. He is now preparing to begin both virtual and physical validation of the technology within the next six months by employing his NATRAX truck for basic ADAS validation.
This feature was first published in the June 1, 2023 issue of Autocar Professional.
