Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)
Studies show that a majority of traffic accidents are caused by human error. In order to reach our vision of accident-free driving, cars need to be outfitted with active support systems that aid the driver in performing routine tasks. As these systems are implemented and refined, they can reduce the burden on the driver and eventually be used to create entirely driverless cars.
Regulations have already been implemented on EU-level, and stricter Euro NCAP criteria are forcing car manufacturers to install active safety and driver assistance systems in all vehicles. Here are some examples:
Accurate assessment of the vehicle’s surroundings and situation are critical to these systems. Environmental information used by many of today’s support systems comes from sensors like radar, lidar, camera, and ultrasound.
In the future, these systems will be able to interpret more complex traffic situations and have more freedom to intervene when necessary. They will be able to not only capture the closest surroundings but also objects further in the distance. One method for achieving this is based on predicting the path of the road, the so-called “electronic horizon”, by utilizing data from digital roadmaps combined with the current position and orientation of the car. Another method, Car2x, utilizes communication channels between the car and the surrounding infrastructure such as traffic lights and road signs.
dSPACE are members of ADASIS Forum and the CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium that defines standardizations for the “electronic horizon” and wireless communication through the WLAN-derived standard IEEE 802.11p.
How then, can the cost of developing ADAS functions be kept at manageable levels despite increasing expectations from customers and ever-increasing demands for security?
The solution is to use a well-coordinated toolchain for developing multisensor-applications, functions, autogenerated production code and simulation where well-suited tools synergize with each other through the entire development process. Using the dSPACE toolchain, large savings can be made in the form of time while simultaneously guaranteeing a high degree of quality in the software.
dSPACE offers many tools specially designed for ADAS functions. Some examples are a testing environment to evaluate Euro NCAP tests through simulations, using Simulink®-blocksets to interpret “electronic horizon” packages, conducting V2X communication, and recording data through RTMaps.
