Digital Twins Let Automakers Test Self-Driving Vehicles Without Building Prototypes
Researchers have created a high-fidelity digital simulation that mimics autonomous off-road vehicles in real time, cutting the cost and timeline of vehicle development. The system can generate training data for AI vision systems and test control algorithms before physical prototypes are built—potentially accelerating autonomous vehicle deployment by years.
Originaltitel: Autonomous Offroad Vehicle Real-Time Multi-Physics Digital Twin: Modeling and Validation
<p>The use of physical vehicles and environments during vehicle research and development is highly resource-intensive, particularly for autonomous vehicles. Recently, digital models are therefore increasingly used instead, which require high levels of fidelity and validity. While the two aforementioned qualities are often lacking, an absence of versatility for multi-purpose use is even more prevalent in current digital models. In response to these challenges, this work presents a novel real-time multi-physics digital twin of an offroad vehicle with high levels of fidelity and validity, both regarding the vehicle dynamics and hydraulics, as well as regarding the visual representation of the environment and the exteroceptive sensor emulation. The versatility of the digital twin enables its usage for vehicle development tasks concerning mechanical components and driveline, as well as for visual machine learning tasks, such as generation of auto-annotated visual training data. Development of control algorithms leveraging both visual input and mechanical systems is also enabled. Furthermore, the real-time capability allows for Hardware-in-the-Loop and Vehicle-in-the-Loop simulation. The modeling, calibration, and real-world validation of the digital twin is presented, with an emphasis on the vehicle dynamics and hydraulics. The shown validity enables advancements in the development of autonomous offroad vehicles.</p>