Expo news: Exclusive Live Demo Day at the American Center for Mobility

The Live Demo Day provides event visitors with the perfect opportunity to see some of the best and latest AV testing technology put through its paces at one of North America’s most sophisticated proving grounds. ACM’s extensive facilities include a 2.5-mile highway loop, a 700ft curved tunnel, six-by-six intersection and two double overpasses incorporating public and private roadways.

AB Dynamics has confirmed it will demonstrate an integrated range of tools for ADAS and AV testing during the Live Demo Day, via two automated driving tests: an AEB test using AB Dynamics’ by-wire controlled Flex-0 vehicle, along with a pilotable platform LaunchPad, to represent vulnerable road users; and a higher-speed ‘cut-in’ test using the company’s Guided Soft Target (GST) vehicle and three other vehicles.

AVL has confirmed it will demonstrate its AVL-DRIVE autonomous vehicle assessment system on a production Tesla Model 3 at the ACM as part of the Live Demo Day. The in-vehicle demonstration will show participants a live view of the AVL-DRIVE autonomous system in operation and will provide an overview of the depth of data and analysis that it can gather. In addition, an interference vehicle will show system response to cut-in events.

Keysight will demonstrate a number of validation technologies, including how to test a vehicle’s connectivity (2/3/4/5G, V2X, WiFi, Bluetooth) in a repeatable environment, while simulating the vehicle in a live network and in a congested environment. Its solution can iterate environmental variables such as weather, angle of arrival, interference, and fading, to augment track environments. It will also demonstrate its Radar Target Simulation (RTS) capabilities, which enable a system to undergo a quick check to verify each sensor is performing as expected. Providing a calibrated reference enables certainty when taking a vehicle on track. It can also enable some interesting testing involving interferers, which has been identified as critical from OEM down to chipset manufacturer. Keysight will also profile the latest version of PenTester, supporting cellular, Bluetooth, and WiFi attack surfaces.

Moshon Data, which supplies the official Euro NCAP Vehicle Target (EVT) through to its own, cost-effective vehicle target, foam targets and custom targets, will demonstrate a realistic ‘Soft City Scape’ environment for vehicle testing and development. While many miles of AV testing are conducted on real roads, there is still a very real need to introduce vehicle sensors to a variety of specific, dangerous scenarios such as a pedestrian walking out from behind a wall or car, and other scenarios that cannot be conducted safely on public roads. Live Demo Day attendees will get to see a range of real world road furniture objects – all made from soft materials – placed in a realistic soft environment, to enable full vehicle sensor testing.

Racelogic will demonstrate its VBOX Indoor Positioning System (VIPS), which provides a highly accurate way of measuring speed, position and attitude (pitch/roll/yaw) in areas where GPS is not available – such as inside the ACM’s curved tunnel (pictured). The system offers unrivaled positional accuracy at better than 2cm. For high dynamic applications, an IMU is installed in the receiver, further enhancing the accuracy of the velocity signal, as well as providing attitude (pitch, roll and yaw) information. The system can be used in facilities of all sizes and seamlessly switches between indoors and outdoors, allowing testing to continue whatever the environment. VIPS is ideal for performance testing, brake testing, tire testing, handling & dynamics, as well as autonomous and ADAS validation, of course.