Automotive Engineering - December 2023 - 7

SPONSORED CONTENT
EXPERT Insight
NI sharpens its HIL expertise with support of autonomous racing
National Instruments offers global positioning and automotive marketing strategies to help solve the challenges involved in testing the
passenger vehicles of today and tomorrow. For this Expert Insight, SAE's Automotive Engineering spoke with Jeff Phillips, NI's Director
of Marketing for the autonomy and electronic segment of the transportation business. NI - now a part of Emerson - is a sponsor of
the Indy Autonomous Challenge for driverless racecars, a competition whose slogan could be " race on Sunday, self-drive on Monday. "
Automotive Engineering: What is the
Indy Autonomous Challenge?
Phillips: The IAC is one of the most exciting
races today. Its goal is to advance the
technology that speeds the commercialization
of fully autonomous vehicles,
especially deployment of driver assistance
capabilities, the stepping-stones to
full autonomy. This leads to better safety
and increased performance, not just in
commercial transportation, but also
across other motorsports and practical
transportation applications.
It's also a platform for students in
STEM, because the IAC team produces
a prototype car used by student competition
teams for the race. The IAC
team builds 16 copies of the prototype
using donated components from industry
leaders, including lidar from
Luminar, radar from Continental, tires from Bridgestone and
onboard computers from dSPACE. Student teams develop software
for those sensors and components and figures out where
and how to drive the cars, then automates the cars to self-drive
in various race conditions. [See NI's at-the-track video about the
IAC here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnTceKUjVds]
Automotive Engineering: Could you expand on how IAC
competition leads to better safety and performance for consumer
vehicles?
Phillips: The IAC team's challenge is representative of what
OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers are doing to produce safe and reliable
cars. The latest technology is upgraded constantly,
whether we're talking about lidar, the interfaces, or network
capabilities. The IAC team is charged with quickly building
and validating the car around these updates and then shares
the prototype with the development teams.
The super-fast race is a microcosm of the challenges we're
facing with commercial autonomy. We don't have to worry
about whether the solid object in front of us is a dog, a cyclist
or another car, so there are many difficult conditions around
commercialized autonomy that we can define with this race.
We're racing and passing at high speeds, and we have just
added a road-race circuit to the ovals for a new set of challenges.
This validates the new technology to do things faster,
safer and more efficiently and effectively.
Automotive Engineering: NI is the Race's HIL sponsor.
What is HIL?
Phillips: Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) is an industry-accepted
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
Jeff Phillips,
NI Director of Marketing
for the autonomy and
electronic segment of the
transportation business.
step in validating technology based
on the behavior of software embedded
in a physical processing unit. The
core idea is that we need to test the
software, so let's isolate it and simulate
everything around it, including
input from various sensors. It tests
software in a prototype without risking
an expensive crash.
Automotive Engineering: Is this a
common step?
Phillips: Five years ago, when cars
came with hundreds of low-function,
low-cost ECUs, I might have said 'no.'
But since the semiconductor shortage,
most OEMs have moved toward domain,
or zonal controllers. They are
more expensive, more functional and
more capable, for far fewer ECUs that
handle multiple functions at once. HIL testing assures this
software works well and that the various sub-systems it controls
work well together.
Lately, we've been moving past HIL to XIL, in which the
variable can be Hardware- or Software-in-the-Loop. We're
even seeing Vehicle-in-the-Loop, which allows OEMs to perform
a vehicle-level test. How does activating the turn signal
affect the system? How are sub-systems working and drawing
power? Tier 1 suppliers believe this can save more money as
they evolve to software-defined vehicles.
Automotive Engineering: Is artificial intelligence an accelerator
for this technology?
Phillips: AI is tangential, but it can be an accelerator that helps
us get there faster. It's not a magic bullet to figure out a difficult
problem. It's a tool to help you get where you're headed
more quickly. I am most excited about using AI in analytics
for a fleet or collection of cars, and how to apply lessons
learned from a broader set of vehicles; now, two people learn
a lesson from an auto accident. AI creates a global network
of learning that can draw from millions of accidents around
the world. The ability to offload expensive processing and
then upload it to a cloud and share what we've learned from
these accidents is the real benefit from using AI to commercialize
autonomous vehicles.
Watch the full interview with Jeff.
December 2023 7

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Automotive Engineering - December 2023

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