High-end engineering for better mobility

Ralph Sal­i­ba, Pres­i­dent of IAV S.A.S.U., explains to us through this inter­view the holis­tic engi­neer­ing approach of his com­pa­ny and how they con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of the mobil­i­ty of the future.

Through a holistic engineering approach, IAV has become synonymous with high-end engineering in the automotive industry worldwide. Tell us more about your positioning.

As one of the glob­al­ly lead­ing engi­neer­ing part­ners, IAV devel­ops the mobil­i­ty of the future. Regard­less of the spe­cif­ic man­u­fac­tur­er, our engi­neer­ing proves itself in vehi­cles and tech­nolo­gies all over the world. With more than 35 years of expe­ri­ence and an unsur­passed range of exper­tise, we com­bine the best of many dif­fer­ent worlds : auto­mo­tive and IT, hard­ware and soft­ware, prod­ucts and services. 

With our work­force of more than 8 000 employ­ees and first-class tech­ni­cal resources, we help our cus­tomers to imple­ment their projects, from the con­cept right through to SOP. Our goal : bet­ter mobility.

Digital change is transforming the automotive industry at a rapid pace. What have you seen in this regard ?

The impact of dig­i­tal­iza­tion is indeed sig­nif­i­cant : Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), Machine Learn­ing and Big Data are find­ing their way into com­pa­nies. Our aim is to com­bine knowl­edge from the var­i­ous dis­ci­plines – from autonomous sys­tems to the use of the lat­est AI tech­nolo­gies – with know-how from the var­i­ous fields. This is where domain meets tech­nol­o­gy. This mis­sion is dri­ven by our inno­va­tion process that is con­tin­u­al­ly improved with a con­stant cycle of know-how trans­fer. Anoth­er impor­tant com­po­nent is the exchange with our research net­work. One of our core com­pe­ten­cies is to devel­op new solu­tions for our cus­tomers to achieve pro­duc­tion matu­ri­ty in a reli­able way. Every day, we are deal­ing with increas­ing­ly com­plex sys­tems, high­er qual­i­ty require­ments, increas­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion efforts and short­er devel­op­ment times. Dig­i­tal­iza­tion helps every­one in the indus­try to meet and mas­ter these chal­lenges effectively.

The auto­mo­tive sec­tor gen­er­ates an extreme­ly large amount of data. There is a lot of poten­tial, but the sys­tem­at­ic eval­u­a­tion of this data is a major chal­lenge. We must focus on smart infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing. We also see a big lever in vir­tu­al­iza­tion and many oppor­tu­ni­ties in the use of rein­force­ment learn­ing. It is always a mat­ter of find­ing new or even bet­ter solu­tions. As a lead­ing devel­op­ment part­ner, we can­not afford to stand idle and have there­fore worked suc­cess­ful­ly on core tech­nolo­gies in the past. The task now is to deploy these new tech­nolo­gies across the board.

In which digitization technologies do you see the greatest potential for the automotive industry ?

Visu­al Simul­ta­ne­ous Local­iza­tion and Map­ping (vSLAM) opens up a promis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring intel­li­gent envi­ron­men­tal per­cep­tion into series prod­ucts in a cost-effec­tive and scal­able way. It can also sup­ple­ment or even replace lidar sys­tems of high­ly auto­mat­ed vehi­cles. IAV has devel­oped its own algo­rithm for this pur­pose, with a focus on appli­ca­tions in the mobil­i­ty sec­tor. In addi­tion, soft­ware tests are com­plex and increas­ing­ly auto­mat­ed. An AI-based solu­tion from IAV accel­er­ates this process : It cre­ates test scripts from the man­u­al test descrip­tions and achieves a high degree of accu­ra­cy in the selec­tion of automa­tion com­po­nents. Test automa­tion is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant : many com­pa­nies rely on machine assis­tance for soft­ware qual­i­ty assur­ance because it increas­es effi­cien­cy and allows them to run tests independently. 

This saves valu­able time and reduces costs. We have there­fore set our­selves the goal of notice­ably accel­er­at­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of test automa­tion with the help of arti­fi­cial intelligence.

Besides, IAV is involved in a research project with more than 60 Work XL street scoot­ers from Deutsche Post DHL. We are exam­in­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty poten­tial of elec­tric fleets and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of intel­li­gent net­work inte­gra­tion. Elec­tric mobil­i­ty is becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar and the demand for elec­tric­i­ty is growing.

The dan­ger : with­out intel­li­gent plan­ning, the sup­ply and demand of ener­gy can become unbal­anced at peak times. 

To pre­vent this, IAV, the Rein­er Lemoine Insti­tute and E.DIS Netz have joined forces in a research project spec­i­fied as « intel­li­gent grid inte­gra­tion of elec­tri­fied logis­tics ». The aim is to devel­op a pro­ce­dure for auto­mat­ed load and charge man­age­ment, so that the entire vehi­cle fleet can be oper­at­ed in a grid-com­pat­i­ble man­ner and thus make its own con­tri­bu­tion towards grid stabilization. 

The idea is to use tar­get­ed, time-con­trolled load shifts to pre­dic­tive­ly avoid pos­si­ble grid bot­tle­necks on the one hand and thus ensure that the fleet is charged, and on the oth­er hand to com­pen­sate for the peaks in the feed-in of renew­able ener­gies into the grid.

What are your perspectives in this context ?

In the future, IAV intends to dis­tin­guish itself even more as a tech provider. Cus­tomers should turn to us with all ques­tions relat­ing to dig­i­tal­iza­tion and the use of new tech­nolo­gies. As of today, IAV already owns the best devel­op­ment meth­ods and serves cus­tomers who entrust us with their most demand­ing and suc­cess-crit­i­cal top­ics and projects. There can be no bet­ter basis for IAV as a devel­op­ment partner. 

This trust ensures that our exper­tise is increas­ing­ly appre­ci­at­ed and in demand beyond the auto­mo­tive indus­try. This is not an end in itself, because in a dig­i­tal and net­worked world, uni­ver­sal cross-sys­tem solu­tions are impor­tant – solu­tions that tran­scend indus­tri­al sec­tor bound­aries. That is what IAV already offers to its cus­tomers today. 

IAV in France

• Full range of pow­er­train engi­neer­ing and test­ing ser­vices, from bench­mark­ing to turnkey projects
• Recent invest­ment in 48V sys­tem e‑testing
• Extend­ed offer thanks to our long term rela­tion­ships and net­work of local part­ners, in France and nearshore regions
• Key ref­er­ences on strate­gic tech­nolo­gies devel­op­ment such as high-volt­age bat­ter­ies (HW & SW), com­bus­tion and after-treat­ment tech­nolo­gies, alter­na­tive fuels, hydro­gen and fuel cell…
• Lead­ing engi­neer­ing part­ner in France in ADAS and AD func­tions devel­op­ment, inte­gra­tion and val­i­da­tion, from research to series applications
• Inno­va­tion projects under­way with the best Euro­pean labs and PhDs to fos­ter cre­ativ­i­ty and a dis­rup­tive approach in auto­mat­ed dri­ving, from Lev­el 3 to Lev­el 5
• Teams of high­ly skilled and flex­i­ble tech­ni­cians and engineers
• france@iav.de

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