Automotive Industry Insights

SETLevel

Project duration: 2019 – August 2022
Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).

SETLevel (“Simulationsbasiertes Entwickeln und Testen von automatisiertem Fahren” – simulation-based development and testing of automated driving) tackles the problem that it is not possible to ensure the absolute traffic safety of automated vehicles based on real driving tests only.
SETLevel deals with the simulation-based development and testing of automated vehicles. In the project, research and development staff of 20 project partners in science and industry are cooperating to form the basis for reliable verification methods and thus for later approval of automated driving functions.

SETLevel builds upon the PEGASUS cooperation project completed in May 2019. In that project, partners from science and industry developed quality standards and methods for making autonomous vehicles safer. The focus was on the context of motorway traffic. SETLevel develops the simulation approaches of PEGASUS on a broader basis and extends the application to the complete traffic environment.

SETLevel states that the scenario-based analysis and testing is essential for automated driving. An overall concept of managing all relevant modules for that purpose has been developed (model interface architecture based on Open Simulation Interface) and is used to guide the project. Requirements from application situations are considered and evaluated with specific simulation use cases. The Credible Simulation Process (https://setlevel.de/assets/forschungsergebnisse/Credible-Simulation-Process.pdf), embedded in the simulation-based engineering task and model creation process, has been refined and is seen as an important reference process to bring the required traceability to scenario-based simulation and testing.

SETLevel complements the work of this study group very well. The three selected simulation use cases test existing and developing standards (OpenScenario 1.x, OpenDrive 1.x, OSI, etc.) and feed the findings back to standards development. By connecting research institutes, tool vendors, and OEMs/tiers, practical needs of productive application projects, possibilities of new methods and research implementations are brought together and assessed in an iterative manner.