Siemens has signed an important deal for its PAVE360 development platform for automotive design. PAVE360 is a system of systems, in the same way, that a car is a system of systems and through Siemens’ Mentor Group, Siemens has simulation tools for the validation and testing of processors, electronics, sensors, and systems. It is being actively used by customers to develop automotive systems and has become very involved in the development and testing of systems for autonomous vehicles.
So has VSI Labs, which has been analyzing automated vehicle technologies since 2014. The company builds its own fleet of cars as testbeds for automated systems. They have used their cars to evaluate by wire control systems, sensor fusion, localization, odometry, and precise localization. The company says it has sampled thousands of products representing over 800 companies.
Siemens and VSI Labs are partnering to advance the development of autonomous car technology. They’ll be using the PAVE360 platform to build digital twin simulations test processors, sensors, electronics, and systems for VSI Labs Capability Demonstrator.
According to Ravi Subramanian of Siemens Mentor group, Siemens has entered into the deal to validate the relationship between Siemens’ digital twin technology and the physical platform. “This collaboration with VSI has the potential to significantly advance the AV space with the creation of a high-fidelity autonomous vehicle digital twin that simulates the interaction and combined power of the most advanced AV components and technologies in the world.”
In the initial phases of the program, Siemens and VSI will focus on SoC functional verification using Mentor’s Veloce hardware emulation platform, but the two companies have plans to collaborate on multiple engineering projects. As mentioned, PAVE360 is a system of systems and it’s designed to enable multi-supplier collaboration across the automotive ecosystem. They’re looking beyond processors to extend to automotive hardware and software sub-systems, full vehicle models, fusion of sensor data, traffic flows, and even smart cities.
It works both ways. Siemens will build a digital twin of VSI’s demonstration vehicle, which again will provide validation for the initiatives of both companies. Phil Magney, president and founder of VSI Labs says, “by creating a digital twin of our demonstration vehicle, VSI developers can test applications long before physical deployment, which will save time and reduce development cycles.”
The partnership between these two companies is logical and promises to accelerate their work on both sides.
What do we think?
We believe PAVE360 is Siemen’s most fully realized product for digital twin development with the potential to marry all the systems that make the car go, and go autonomously. (We’re also pretty enchanted with the work Siemens and Bentley Systems has done in the Process and Power industry.)
We once argued that true digital twins for complex systems like cars, or plants, or cities were more aspirational than realistic. We were wrong. These ideas are rapidly coming together and it will be partnerships between companies that own their own parts of the puzzle that make complex digital twins a reality.
