Testing autonomous vehicles in the cloud

Cloud-based simulation – automated test driving of autonomous vehicles

Virtual testing of autonomous vehicles using state-of-the-art cloud technologies: We have designed and implemented a generic, cloud-based platform that can process large amounts of data in real time and assist engineers in validating vehicle functions – without putting a single car on the road.

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Real-time simulations in the cloud – faster, cheaper and more efficient

Efficiently testing the behaviour of autonomous vehicles usually requires thousands of kilometres of test driving in real traffic. This is difficult to realise in practice, however. For this reason, autonomous vehicle journeys are often recreated on local computers through simulated testing. To get an impression that is as close as possible to reality, effective simulations require a lot of computing resources. With high-performance and scalable cloud technologies, the requirements for automated execution of simulations can be easily implemented with high-performance and scalable cloud technologies. ZF Friedrichshafen AG uses this method, and doubleSlash was the strategic software partner for the design and implementation of the simulation platform.

Greater efficiency through scalability in the cloud

The simulation program is operated using the OpenShift cloud platform. Testers can load the simulations to the cloud platform over specially designed interfaces. The simulations are built and executed there automatically, meaning that the tester only waits a fraction of the time previously required for the results of the simulation. It’s also possible to run multiple simulations sequentially or in parallel. Resources are virtually unlimited, since the cloud platform is elastic, scalable and provides optimal resource efficiency. Thanks to these efficient simulations, ZF Friedrichshafen AG will be able to improve the road safety and reliability of autonomous vehicles much faster.

doubleSlash – your partner for Openshift, cloud integration and high-performance clusters

doubleSlash has many years of project experience in the cloud environment using OpenShift as the technological platform and a microservice-based software architecture. Our role in developing the simulation tool was not only to provide consulting services – we also helped design, develop and provision the operating environment.

The cloud-based simulation tool enables efficient execution of highly automated simulation tests which previously required a significant amount of time and effort. Our biggest challenges were to process large amounts of data in real time, and to couple the platform with various simulation tools and calculation systems.

There are plans to enhance the tool and roll it out in other areas. In future, it will be possible not only to return the simulation results to the tester, but also make them accessible to other purposes (for developing AI services or algorithms, for example).

Our services:

Agile project management
Technical and IT conception
Microservice architecture
Agile software development
DevOps
CI / CD

Technologies used:

OpenShift
Kubernetes
Docker
NoSQL
Kafka
Swagger
Tomcat

Our connected car technologies at a glance

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