Digital twin for autonomous driving

Project SAVeNoW investigates the safety and socio-ecological benefits of automated and connected mobility [ Picture: SAVe / Phantasma Labs] - Autonomous driving will come about. But how do you make it safe for each traffic situation, what transportation infrastructure will be required, and what will be the impact of future traffic models? Under the leadership of Audi AG, the SAVeNoW consortium is running a simulation on these questions using a digital twin of the urban traffic of Ingolstadt as an example. The Department of Interior Design Engineering at the Institute for Engineering Design and Industrial Design (IKTD) at the University of Stuttgart is investigating in part of the project how the design of the vehicle interior can influence traffic behavior. If software development for autonomous driving is already a major challenge, software testing and validation will be even more so: For a variety of individual traffic situations, proof is required that the vehicle is safe. When driving on highways with their regulated traffic, such verifications are still feasible in the real world. In bustling city centers, however, this is practically impossible because of the many unpredictable traffic situations, and some tests are not an option anyway for safety reasons. Against this background, the partners from SAVeNoW (Functional and Traffic Safety for Automated and Connected Mobility - benefits for society and ecological impact) already developed the tools and processes for a digital copy of a city in a previous project.