Vehicle Safety
Vehicles have become much safer in recent decades. But we are not satisfied yet: IAV takes the “Vision Zero” approach, aiming for further massive reductions in the number of accidents in future. This is why we combine active and passive vehicle safety in integral safety.
Passive safety systems such as seat belts and airbags mitigate many consequences of road traffic accidents, without being able to prevent vehicles from colliding in the first place. Active safety aims to prevent collisions completely or at least limit the consequences. Today both areas are merging increasingly in integral safety. Changes in the mobility world are having a great impact on our work. We have to take due account of the various powertrain concepts such as combustion engines, hybrid systems or electric motors, while at the same time also adapting to automated driving. This is simply inconceivable without smart systems for active safety. At the same time, it also demands new solutions for passive safety. The completely new design of passenger compartments with changed seat positions leads to new challenges for passenger protection with the need for additional sensor systems inside the vehicle.
IAV makes driving safer through 360°. Our sights are set not just on active and passive safety inside the individual vehicle, but our solutions also extend to the infrastructure and the entire mobility eco-system. Our proprietary “Active Safety Layer” development, for instance, adds algorithms and controllers for highly critical situations to the automated driving architecture, regardless of the manufacturer. Solutions like this make us the benchmark for engineering methods and technologies in the field of vehicle safety.
Our specialists use agile methods for algorithm development, our own simulation methods and tools (such as the IAV Scene Suite), as well as virtual methods such as Concept-in-the-Loop for validating the algorithms already early on during algorithm development. Furthermore, they are deploying a combination of virtual and real elements (such as Vehicle-in-the-Loop), together with our own test equipment and the IAV test site in Altenburg. IAV also has two crash test facilities in Gifhorn and Großmehring near Ingolstadt for front, rear and side crash testing to cover the requirements of all markets, statutory regulations and consumer protection requirements. Our site in southern Germany is also capable of carrying out roll-over tests and testing vehicles with flammable high-voltage components.
We offer our customers function concepts, simulations, algorithm development for volume production, test reports and release recommendations. We ensure compliance with statutory regulations and consumer protection requirements such as those formulated in the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) . After all, a 5-star rating of passive and active vehicle safety is a crucial sales attribute in today’s markets. And it helps to make “Vision Zero” come true.
