In the course of the testEPS project, digital 3D images of one of the Digitrans test tracks in St. Valentin were created. The Digitrans test center for automated driving is located on the premises of the Magna Powertrain Engineering Center Steyr and is specially designed for developers and users who want to test driving functions in autonomous vehicles and commercial vehicles. The new "digital twins" now make it possible to perform sophisticated tests and simulations of automated driving functions up to and including the physical wave propagation of radar or lidar signals with which vehicles scan their surroundings (sensor simulation).
For the first time, a combination of the latest measuring equipment was used for the highly accurate measurement, which was brought to bear by a vehicle, a drone and also a person. The new DIGITAL TWIN LAB of JOANNEUM RESEARCH (BMK-funded research infrastructure) is able to create seamless digital images of test environments through the unique combination of recording possibilities from different perspectives and methods for data fusion, which make every smallest detail available for realistic simulation and testing.
In the next step, highly accurate reference maps (UHDmaps®) and 3D models are derived from the fused measurement data in the DIGITAL TWIN LAB by using automated evaluation methods based on image processing and artificial intelligence (AI). The project partners VIF and TUG as well as AVL and AiMotive will further use the spatial digital twins for testing and simulating automated vehicles and their environment perception as close to reality as possible.
The team of experts around Patrick Luley of the research group Remote Sensing and Geoinformation at the DIGITAL Institute would like to thank DigiTrans GmbH for the invitation and the possibility to create a digital twin of the Proving Ground. All measuring devices of the DIGITAL-TWIN-LABS were in use and the elaboration and derivation of simulation-capable digital twins for our EUREKA Test.EPS project partners is in full swing.
The testEPS project is funded by the Federal Ministry Republic of Austria for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology.
Fotos: Digitrans GmbH
