d SPACE has received certification from TÜV Süd for its Simphera software solution according to ISO 26262, a standard for safety-related systems. Simphera is a cloud-based simulation and validation solution, used to validate functions for autonomous driving.
Automotive manufacturers and suppliers worldwide can now exempt Simphera from the qualification of their overall processes according to ISO 26262, and can focus on proving the functional safety of their own highly complex process chains. Just nine months after the Simphera product launch, the certification was issued by TÜV Süd, an international, independent specialist in testing, inspection and certification.
Following the successful initial certification, dSPACE and TÜV Süd have agreed to jointly develop a new procedure for the continuous certification of software products developed in an agile manner, such as Simphera, according to ISO 26262. In this way, new features for the validation of functions for autonomous driving can be provided in short intervals in future, quickly and safely.
“We want our customers to be able to focus on their core competencies when developing applications for autonomous driving functions, and to use dSPACE‘s tools with the certainty that the functions developed with them will meet the highest industry standards in terms of functional safety,“ says Tino Schulze, executive vice president for automated driving & software solutions at dSPACE.
Simphera, the web-based, highly scalable cloud solution from dSPACE, lets users perform the computation-intensive validation of functions for autonomous driving quickly and easily, supports collaboration of development teams that are distributed worldwide, and lets customers seamlessly integrate their applications. Reusable models, scenarios, tests and interfaces allow for continuous testing on SiL and HiL platforms.
The development of functions for highly automated and autonomous driving places increasingly strict requirements on the quality and safety of functions. This has resulted in a skyrocketing number of tests that need a large and scalable computing infrastructure.
At the same time, virtual tests are front-loaded to earlier phases of development, where they are executed by internationally distributed development teams. With this in mind, dSPACE has developed Simphera, a scalable, web-based solution that meets all the performance and usability requirements.
Simphera supports developers and validation engineers by providing three components that are seamlessly integrated with each other. The first component, Prepare, gives users the tools they need to generate and modify all artefacts required for specific development or validation tasks. This can include proprietary simulation models that are needed for the development or validation tasks, such as vehicle, sensor, roads, traffic, and environment models or scenarios.
In the Simulate component, the prepared models and scenarios are used for interactive simulations. The users can check the desired algorithm behaviour with a range of visualisation and measurement functions.
The functions of the third component, Validate, help users perform scenario-based testing on a large scale. Intelligent variations of parameters in a scenario can turn a handful of logical scenarios into a plethora of specific test cases. The test cases can then be rapidly processed and analysed in more detail.
