VeHIL
VeHIL stands for “Vehicle Hardware-in-the-Loop”. It is a unique facility that aims to make the development and testing of intelligent vehicles safer, cheaper and more manageable.
VeHIL can be regarded as the missing link between simulations and road tests. VeHIL allows developers to test and evaluate the functionality of a complete vehicle, as well as its subsystems and sensors, in controlled yet realistic circumstances.
Amongst the most promising developments in road transport are driver support systems and fully automated intelligent transport systems. Such systems can be characterised by the presence of sensors, actuators and on-board computers which convert sensor information into commands to the engine and brakes.
Extensive development and testing processes are necessary to ensure that these systems are safe and reliable. Until now this has been done largely by carrying out expensive and time-consuming full-scale road tests. VeHIL brings a radical change to this way of testing.
Within VeHIL, the Vehicle Under Test (VUT), which is equipped with the intelligent system that is under development, is completely real. In contrast, the other traffic participants in the scenario are simulated and represented by wheeled mobile robots, also known as Moving Bases (MBs).
The VUT is placed on a chassis dynamometer (a roller bench) whereas the MBs are designed to perform every conceivable two-dimensional course. The MBs can be extended with a dummy body, resembling real passenger cars for radar, lidar and vision systems.
- Adaptive cruise control / Stop & Go
- Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication
- Vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication
- Platooning
- Overtaking
- Split and merge
- Pre-crash sensing
- Obstacle detection
- Fully automatic operation
The main benefits of VeHIL are:
- Safe testing
- High accuracy
- Reproducible
- Ground truth data available
- Relative instead of absolute velocities
- No dependence on weather conditions