dSPACE - Magazine 2016/01

I vividly remember my mother playing “driver assistant”

in the passenger seat: “Herbert, slow down! Slow down!”

But as they say, “You brake, you lose!” and “The later

you brake, the faster you go.” I’m just kidding, of course,

because cautious driving is very important to me. First

of all, it is safer. Second, I have never liked converting

precious drive energy into mere heat. This is why I am

enjoying my new electric city car with brake energy

recuperation. However, in the small car I have to do

without additional driver assistance systems, a luxury

I enjoy in larger vehicles. I have been driving with

adaptive cruise control (radar) for a long time. Today,

I also benefit from lane keeping and blind spot assis-

tants as well as headlight beam control, traffic sign de-

tection, a speed limiter, a surround camera system and,

last but not least, the rarely used mother assistant that

blinks and beeps and even supports the brake process

instead of just shouting “Slow down! Slow down!” –

Although it would probably be possible to program it

that way. We get used to these systems very quickly

and don’t want to do without them in our next vehicle.

One of the strongest motivators in the automotive

industry today, and therefore also at dSPACE, is advanced

driver assistance systems – from predictive to autono-

mous driving. We have seen a lot of these projects and

the topic is picking up speed as I write. It is also gaining

speed at dSPACE, as you can see from our cooperation

with Intempora (page 66).

What’s remarkable is that, apparently, the largest chal-

lenge of the industry is not to develop the functions,

but to test them. I have heard from various sources that

“our tests would have to cover hundreds of millions of

kilometers more than before” because the systems are

that complex. Since this is simply impossible in reality,

we will face enormous challenges in test design and

test implementation. One great help is frontloading

tests to perform them on the PC before the HIL tests.

We also support this method, which is spurred in par-

ticular by advanced driver assistance systems.

In light of the systems’ complexity and the related legal

issues, I made a bet last year. I claimed that 20 years

from now, we will not see a higher proportion of driver-

less cars in Paderborn – although I will gladly treat the

winner to the promised magnum bottle of champagne

if I am wrong.

Dr. Herbert Hanselmann

“The bet is on!”

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