Sven Beiker led a discussion about Testing & Simulation of Autonomous Vehicles – Balancing the real and virtual worlds of future mobility. This event was hosted by Stanford Research Park in collaboration with SAE International and hosted by Ford Greenfield Labs.

“How safe is safe enough?” – that is one of the most essential, most discussed, and still unanswered questions around autonomous vehicles. As the industry prepares for the deployment of self-driving cars, there appears to be only one way to ensure safety: to run over and over again through each and every possible situation those vehicles might encounter during operation. This is done in part through testing on public roads, but to maximize safety and accuracy, closed course testing is also very important. And still, as it is understood that hundreds of millions of miles would need to be driven in order to prove the safety of autonomous vehicles, simulating those situations in the virtual world has also become essential. This presentation and following panel discussion dove into those topics to discuss how the real and virtual worlds need to be balanced for safety, efficacy, and efficiency in testing and how important fidelity of simulation models is in order to draw conclusions from the virtual to the real world. The panelists are members of a core team that gave input to the two most recent SAE International EDGE Research Reports titled “Balancing Virtual, Closed- Course, and Public-Road Testing of Automated Driving Systems” and “Determining Appropriate Modeling Fidelity for Automated Driving Systems Simulation”.

Panelists:
Sven A. Beiker – Managing Director at Silicon Valley Mobility (moderator)
Alexander Kraus – Senior Vice President Automotive at TÜV SÜD
Georg List – Vice President Corporate Strategy at AVL
Robert Seidl – Managing Director at Motus Ventures
Thomas Bock – Director Vehicle Integration & Testing at Samsung Smart Machines