Digital road modelling service for vehicle dynamic development wins prestigious award
New digital road modelling service from rFpro is VDI’s ‘Development Tool of the Year’
Hertfordshire, UK, 28th April 2015... An ultra-accurate digital road surface modelling service provided by simulator software specialists, rFpro, has been voted ‘Development Tool of the Year’ by Vehicle Dynamics International magazine. The service significantly reduces development time and costs by allowing manufacturers to evaluate their vehicle’s chassis response to any road type anywhere in the world in a realistic virtual environment.
In a resounding victory, rFpro picked up top marks from over 90 percent of the judging panel drawn from industry experts and specialists, reflecting the scale of the company’s achievement and its value to the wider industry.
"Replicating the entire Nordschleife, with a vertical tolerance of less than 1mm, is nothing short of incredible,” said John O’Brien, Editor of Vehicle Dynamics International. “The implications for simulators and other development software tools are significant, particularly as OEMs move toward truly 'Global cars' as part of their respective ranges. Anything that can help the correlation between real-world testing and simulator work is more than a worthy winner in this category."
Chris Hoyle, rFpro’s Technical Director, was clearly delighted by the result. “We are thrilled to have won Vehicle Dynamics International’s prestigious Development Tool of the Year award,” he said. “When developing our digital road modelling capability our aim was to create a service that would help our customers derive even greater benefit from their vehicle simulators. Digital road models are a critical part of the transition from physical prototypes to a representative virtual world. This award also recognises the substantial contribution of our team in helping vehicle manufacturers test their autonomous and active assistance systems.”
Revisions to a vehicle to suit individual market tastes late in a development program can be costly, so manufacturers aim to avoid such issues by testing as early as possible. A simulator allows a human driver to experience the vehicle’s behaviour in a virtual environment, long before physical prototypes are available, but needs an accurate road model to be really useful. To capture road surfaces with better accuracy than ever before, rFpro employs a breakthrough in scanning technology to capture up to 50 times the level of detail previously achieved.
Hoyle believes the award will further increase demand for the modelling service. “It is fantastic to have our contribution honoured by industry specialists in this way and we are delighted to have won,” he said. “Growing numbers of vehicle makers are asking us to reproduce their favourite test route surfaces and our digital road modelling workload is increasing rapidly; this year we expect to build approximately 3,000 kilometres of digital road models.”
“Any vehicle manufacturer with an established vehicle model can benefit from the road models produced using our new digital road building capability,” he added. “Even after prototype vehicles are available, the cost and logistical challenges of testing on roads in different continents can be reduced by the strategic use of effective virtual testing.”
About rFpro
rFpro is a specialist software company that has developed driver-in-the-loop simulators for vehicle dynamics applications, offering the fastest video and audio pipelines, an architecture for soft-real-time model execution and an optically correct off-platform vision system optimised for motion profiles suited to ride and handling development. This specialised area of driver-in-the-loop simulation is all about closing the loop through the driver and the vehicle model as quickly as possible while delivering a high quality and immersive environment.
To deliver complete DIL simulators for the engineering development of vehicle dynamics, and the control systems and active safety systems that affect vehicle dynamics, rFactor Pro works in partnership with motion platform providers such as McLaren, Ansible Motion and MOOG. The company’s products can wrap around vehicle models from all the popular modelling environments, including Dymola, SIMPACK, Simulink, AVL-VSM, CarSim, CarMaker, LMS AMESim, VI-Grade and C/C++.
Press Contact
Richard Doherty at Market Engineering
+44 (0)1295 277 050
richard.doherty@m-eng.com
Illustrations
High-resolution images are available at www.autopresspoint.com
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