“Autonomous driving is one of the technologies that will have a significant impact on our lives in the future. It isn’t just about comfort and ease-of-use, but particularly about safety. Which is why the stated goal of the technology is Vision Zero, meaning a world without traffic fatalities. At TÜV SÜD, we’re developing the appropriate methods to get self-driving cars safely onto the streets to achieve exactly this goal. Some of our work includes evaluating the functional safety of the vehicles or testing the IT. We also test the vehicles on the road—both in real-life driving tests as well as in virtual environments.
In one of our most recent projects, we tested the safety of the autonomous driving vehicles of Mobileye in Germany. The company relies primarily on a system of cameras to enable the car to move autonomously. To achieve this, the cameras must be precisely calibrated, as seen in the photo here, to compensate for the distortion from the lens. This works best using a checkerboard pattern. Mobileye’s cars have been driving through Bavaria since summer 2020, but there’s still a safety driver in the car who can intervene in the event of an emergency. Moreover, the cars aren’t allowed to drive faster than 130 kilometers per hour. In addition to these specific projects, we’re also involved with standardization committees, where we can contribute TÜV SÜD’s point of view. In this way we also learn about upcoming regulations and can adapt our methodologies. This may sound a bit abstract, but is actually extremely important in practice. We frequently have to deal with questions such as: What happens after a software update? Or what will the main inspection look like in the future? We often work directly with governments on creating the framework for the main inspection of the vehicles of the future. All the approaches have one thing in common: we want to make Vision Zero a reality. It’s also what inspires me personally every day.”
