MUNICH: The BMW Group’s new Driving Simulation Centre is taking shape in Munich’s Milbertshofen district.
In mid-August, the company began construction of the world’s most advanced facility for the simulation of real-world driving situations at the FIZ Research and Innovation Centre in the north of the city.
The new building provides unique possibilities for virtual testing of advanced driving assistance systems and innovative display and control concepts.
This will, above all, strengthen the development expertise of the BMW Group in the field of autonomous driving.
A unique feature of the facility is the high-fidelity simulator, in which longitudinal, transverse and rotational movements of a vehicle can be represented simultaneously and therefore very realistically. This allows the BMW engineers to “bring the road into the lab,” in order to conduct studies just as if they were taking place in real-world road traffic.
For the first time, urban driving situations – which represent a particular challenge in the context of autonomous driving – can now also be reproduced realistically, allowing vehicle responses to be constantly enhanced.
The foundation stone for the first phase was laid in autumn 2017 and now the start of work on the new Driving Simulation Centre marks a further stage in the project.
It is being built in a central area between the Projekthaus and the Aerodynamic Test Centre. Covering a total floor area of 11,400 square metres, the facility will comprise 14 simulators and usability labs employing 157 people. BMW Group Research is planning to start work here in 2020. The investment in the new Driving Simulation Centre is estimated at around 100 million euros (RM481mil).
At the heart of the new Driving Simulation Centre are two innovative driving simulators specifically designed to meet requirements for testing highly complex automated driving systems.
The new high-dynamic simulator is able to generate longitudinal and transverse acceleration forces of up to 1.0 g. It is used to test new systems and functions by replicating highly dynamic evading manoeuvres, full braking and hard acceleration.
An extremely detailed rendering of real-world driving characteristics is provided by the second unit, the high-fidelity simulator: braking and accelerating while cornering, driving in roundabouts and rapid series of multiple turn-off manoeuvres can be reproduced with high precision in this simulator’s almost 400-square-metre motion area.
This means that, for the first time, complex urban driving situations – which present a particularly wide range of challenges for automated driving systems – can now be replicated under laboratory conditions.
The new Driving Simulation Centre is therefore ideally placed to meet the ever greater requirements arising from the growing complexity of systems for automated driving.
In future, it will allow different driving situations to be reproduced in significantly greater numbers and in more detailed form.
