The public’s trust in self-driving technologies has taken a hit in recent months after a spate of high-profile incidents in the U.S. but a new partnership between Audi and Applied Intuition aims to address key safety issues with such systems for use on future vehicles.
While you may not have heard of Applied Intuition before, the company works with over a dozen major car manufacturers and is partnering with Audi to build a unified solution to support the development, validation, type approval, and deployment of automated driving systems for future Audi vehicles.
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The two companies will look to accelerate the process of developing automated driving functions while also reducing costs by using Applied’s end-to-end simulation and data management solutions. This framework will also use Audi’s scenario-based systems engineering experience to support all current and future regulatory requirements.
“Ensuring safety is critical as we’re making progress on autonomous driving technology,” Applied Intuition co-founder and chief executive Qasar Younis said. “A lot of the safety concerns and confusion today stem from misinformation. There’s a real lack of clarity among mainstream audiences regarding the current capabilities of these vehicles. Consumers often expect the car to be more fully self-driving than it’s validated or certified to be. Automakers are conducting well-thought-out testing and certainly aren’t rushing their approach to safety, but different countries have different local rules and regulations. There’s a massive need for a more regulated and homologous ADAS/AD validation toolchain that automakers can use globally.”
Neither Audi nor Applied Intuition have said how long their partnership will last. It also remains unclear when their joint solution for automated driving functions will be ready and start to benefit future Audi models.
“The expertise of both Applied Intuition and Audi creates a mutual benefit to deliver high-quality automated functions across the globe, no matter which AD software stack we are bringing to our customers,” executive vice president for ADAS/AD in Audi’s Engineering Department, Dr. Gero Kempf, said. “In compliance with AD regulations, Applied Intuition’s solution allows us to highly automate our scenario-based, data-driven engineering workflows and adapt jointly developed applications as white-box solutions for the overall management of high-performance, safety-critical AD systems.”
