Claytex is at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Technology Expo California to showcase its AVSandbox product, which is an ADAS and AV simulation environment. According to managing director Mike Dempsey, “AVSandbox provides a sensor realistic simulation environment to immerse the ADAS feature or AV control system into the virtual world so that our customers can test and develop their systems using simulation.”
The company is also highlighting the fact that the UK’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) has recently awarded a multi-million-pound grant to the Sim4CAMSens project, focused on how to improve sensor models and validate them ready for use in safety assurance processes. Dempsey explained, “It is a collaborative R&D project, led by Claytex, working with an array of partners to develop the models, test processes and validation methods for sensor models. The project is supported by CCAV and was awarded as part of their Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility: Supply Chain competition.
“The award is very significant. There is a presumption that simulation will be used to support the safety case for autonomous vehicles, but to do that we must have confidence in the simulation tools being used to ensure that they are representative of what happens in the real world and that the simulation results reflect how the system will behave in the real world. At the moment, the industry is not sure how to do this, and through this project we will be developing a framework for the testing and validation of sensors and sensor models.”
As part of the project, Claytex is looking at how simulation data can be used in the safety case argumentation that will form a key part of type approval in the UK and EU.
“If the simulation of the perception sensors is not accurate and realistic, then the AV control system will not be receiving similar data to what it gets in the real world and may therefore behave very differently in simulation than it does in reality,” emphasized Dempsey. “We want to reduce the gap between simulation and reality.”
Speaking about the expo, he said, “With so many AV companies in the Bay Area, we hoped that the show would attract a substantial audience from these companies and, based on the success of the Stuttgart show, we thought this would be possible.”
Speak to Claytex on Booth 416.