ADAS & Autonomous Vehicles Special Report - December 2024 - 19

BOTH IMAGES: rFPRO
rFpro reveals 'massive, complicated' LA model
S
imulation company rFpro has
already mapped over 180 digital
locations around the world, including
public roads, proving grounds and
race circuits. But the company's
latest is by far its biggest and most
complicated. Matt Daley, technical
director at rFpro, announced at
AutoSens USA 2024 that its new
Los Angeles route is an " absolutely
massive, complicated model " of a
36-km (22-mile) loop that can be
virtually driven in both directions.
Along these digital roads - which were
built off survey-grade LIDAR data with
a 1 cm by 1 cm (1.1-in by 1.1 in ) X-Y
grid - rFpro has added over 12,000
buildings, 13,000 pieces of street
infrastructure (like signs and lamps),
and 40,000 pieces of vegetation.
" It's a fantastic location, " Daley
said. " It's a huge array of different
types of challenging infrastructure
for AVs. You can drive this loop with
full vehicle dynamic inputs, ready to
excite the suspension and, especially
with AVs, shake the sensors in the
correct way as you would be getting
if you were driving those real roads. "
RFpro's new LA map includes over 12,000 buildings, 13,000 pieces of infrastructure (signs and lamps)
and 40,000 plants.
The new digital map covers an
area in southwest LA that includes
Highway 110 from the harbor up to
Carson, going through industrial areas,
dense residential areas in Torrance,
and suburban Rolling Hills. The variety
is what makes this new model so
valuable to companies that want to
simulate various tests, especially for
new automated driving systems.
" We are now able to give
autonomous vehicles the ability to
test in all of these different types of
environments, junctions, and road
types that they're going to experience
in day-to-day life, " Daley said, adding
that there are railroad crossings, gas
stations, intersections, and highway
on- and off-ramps in the data set.
" The grand challenge of autonomous
development is that you need so much
diversity available to you, " Daley told
SAE Media. " It's extremely difficult
to get in the real world, because you
have to go so many different miles,
so many places, and really drive so
much volume in order to create it.
It's a slightly different challenge in
simulation, because we can create
diversity and let people create second
levels of diversity inside existing maps. "
Not just for human drivers
RFpro started in 2007 in the
driver-in-the-loop market. In 2015,
the company started to think about
how to integrate ADAS testing.
" We realized that the amount of
A scene from rFpro's new Los Angeles map, which is a 36-km (22-mile) loop that can be driven in
both directions.
ADAS & AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES SPECIAL REPORT
investment that we got in providing
a solid simulation platform and
infrastructure, as well as our
technologies and abilities to build
3D models, we could add additional
layers, " Daley said. " We knew it
DECEMBER 2024 19

ADAS & Autonomous Vehicles Special Report - December 2024

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