Automotive Testing and Traffic Simulation
The microscopic traffic simulation PTV Vissim has proven itself for many years as a development tool in automotive engineering. It enables you to build up a responsive digital test environment for vehicles of all kinds. The software provides realistic, reactive, and behavior model-based surrounding traffic to enable closed-loop testing in extensive virtual test drives.
The traffic scene evolves dynamically based on the interactions of road users with each other and with the traffic network to enable exploratory testing without the need to predefine specific scenarios. The microscopic simulation allows for full reproducibility of a specific test drive or infinite, automatically generated variations of it.
Use Cases
PTV Vissim Automotive comes with all the trusted features of PTV Vissim and adds a powerful set of functionalities, specifically designed to serve the needs of our clients from automotive development.
Powertrain Development and Testing
Go beyond standard test cycles or a simple replay of a load profile: Stop-and-go traffic with frequent acceleration and braking, driving up a hill, narrow curves, or speeding on a highway – Vissim Automotive allows you to simulate situations like these in a dynamic virtual testing environment, to reproduce them, and to repeat them with changing variables. Such tests are essential in the powertrain development to ensure that your components and your control strategy provide the highest real-world value to your customers.
PTV Vissim Automotive can be integrated with different XiL set-ups and thus supports Model in the Loop (MiL), Software in the Loop (SiL), as well as Hardware in the Loop (HiL) testing.
Development of ADAS and AV Software
With Vissim Automotive, you can develop, test, validate, and optimize functionalities of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Vehicle (AV) functions. The software creates realistic surrounding traffic that can be coupled with detailed vehicle simulation tools from third-party providers. Vissim Automotive has interfaces to all major industry solutions, e.g. IPG CarMaker, Virtual Test Drive, dSpace ASM, and Simcenter PreScan, enabling comprehensive co-simulations that take all aspects of vehicle interactions into account. The dynamic traffic environment will challenge the functionality of your system under test. You can easily increase the aggressiveness of the surrounding traffic or even add driver errors like temporal distraction to raise the bar and provide more challenging situations in your virtual test drive.
PTV Vissim Automotive can further be used for virtual scenario mining through an explorative search for challenging test situations for your driving function.
Your Benefits of Using PTV Vissim Automotive
Interfaces to leading vehicle simulation programs & option for scripting (e.g. Python)
Based on scientifically developed and worldwide-leading car following models
Decades of research and continuous development with customers
Extensive parameterization and calibration options for worldwide applicability
Parallel computing and test automation for fastest possible results
PTV Vissim traffic continuously interacts with the system under test
Get in touch
If you need traffic simulation in the automotive development, PTV Vissim is your go to. Get in touch and let's find out, how PTV software will support you.
Features
Easy Driving Behavior Set-Up
The challenge for the system under test varies largely with the aggressiveness of the traffic environment and the resulting interactions. Vissim Automotive provides easy set-up of driving behavior for environmental traffic. The user can switch between five pre-configured driving styles, from comfort oriented, over neutral, to aggressive. These styles will influence:
- Acceleration/deceleration functions
- Configuration of conflict areas
- Curve speed functions
- Driver model properties (e.g. gap times, safety distances, accepted decelerations for lane changes etc.)
In addition, it will allow for a global adjustment of the speed level and enable an easy stochastic use of different driver errors in order to trigger critical situations.
OpenDRIVE Support
The ASAM OpenDRIVE format was created to provide a common base for describing roadnetworks across different software solutions and is an established industry standard. Vissim Automotive supports the import of OpenDRIVE networks up to the latest version 1.8 or older. Based on this import, you can easily reuse your existing test networks and set up co-simulations based on one common network description. The OpenDRIVE import from Vissim Automotive does not only import the pure road geometry but also control elements like speed limits, priority rules or even signal heads for traffic lights.
Behavior Model for Automated Driving
PTV Vissim’s standard car following model reflects human behavior, including its imperfections for perception of distance and speed. However, more and more cars use Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) or even automated driving (AD). They rely on sensors for perception and algorithmic control and thus behave differently.
PTV Vissim Automotive therefore, in addition to the standard model, offers a new behavior model specifically designed to simulate automated driving states. It contains a generalized ACC implementation for following and an ALC-based lane change model. The surrounding traffic, simulated by Vissim Automotive, can consist of only one, or a mixture of both behavior models to reflect a mixture of automated and human-driven operation.
Further Features
Generation of basic surrounding traffic
PTV Vissim Automotive considerably speeds up the process from an empty network to a usable test environment. It automatically creates default traffic, generating:
- node objects from OpenDRIVE intersections
- vehicle inputs
- vehicle routing
- right of way (coming soon)
- signal controllers with default programs (coming soon)
Enhanced Parallel Computing
Unlock the power of parallelization: Run multiple co-simulations under use of Driving Simulator Interface (DSI) in parallel on just one machine to significantly speed up your development processes.
High Calculation Frequency
PTV Vissim Automotive allows for high calculation frequency and output of results with up to 1 kHz and therefore allows for coupling of models, software, components, or full vehicles in the loop.
Driver Model Interface for Linux Kernel
PTV Vissim is also available as Linux-based Kernel. Use it as a headless calculation engine for extensive virtual testing. It now also supports the Driver Model Interface to use custom car-following and lane change models, giving you the flexibility to work with your own or external driver models.
Import of Elevation Data
Height and slope of a road have significant influence on driving resistance forces and hence require propulsion and energy consumption of the vehicle. The use of accurate height information is therefore crucial in automotive testing. Vissim Automotive enables you to easily import external elevation data from GeoTIFF files. It then automatically assignes the data to the Vissim network points to create slopes.