Volvo Autonomous Solutions has signed an agreement with verification company Foretellix to, they say, jointly address the challenges of large-scale verification of autonomous driving solutions on highways and confined areas, such as mines.
Volvo’s partnership with Foretellix will see the two firms jointly create a Coverage Driven Verification solution for autonomous driving solutions. The solution will enable massive scale testing of millions of different scenarios, which will validate autonomous vehicles and machines dealing with anything they might encounter within their specified Operational Design Domain (ODD), according to Volvo.
The partnership will focus on providing high levels of safety and productivity of Volvo Autonomous Solution vehicles and machines.
The ability of the solution to orchestrate large scale simulation and conduct the big data analysis required will lead to a substantial reduction in costs and time to market, ensuring faster operational readiness and the ability to safely scale up the system across multiple sites and ODDs, according to Volvo.
Foretellix, Volvo says, is a pioneer in the commercialisation of coverage-driven methodologies for automated driving systems verification. It developed a novel verification platform that uses intelligent automation and big data analysis tools that coordinate and monitor millions of driving scenarios to expose bugs and edge cases, including the most extreme examples.
Volvo Autonomous Solutions will jointly adapt Foretellix’s verification system for applications in mining and quarrying, with both companies using the Open Measurable Scenario Description Language (M-SDL) created by Foretellix. M-SDL simplifies the capture, reuse and sharing of scenarios, and can specify any mix of scenarios and operating conditions, to identify previously unknown hazards, according to Volvo.
Magnus Liljeqvist, Global Technology Manager for Volvo Autonomous Solutions, said: “Volvo Autonomous Solutions believes in a collaborative verification concept, one that uses open standards. The partnership with Foretellix gives us access to the state-of-the-art verification tools and accelerating our time to market.”
Ziv Binyamini, CEO and co-Founder of Foretellix, said: “This partnership is a significant milestone for the industry as it is the first time that large scale Coverage Driven Verification will be used for verification of ADS in confined areas. Our partnership will combine the expertise of the two companies and set a new standard in the verification of automated driving systems, boosting both safety and productivity.”
In 2020, both companies conducted a successful pre-study that evaluated the Foretellix portfolio and its potential value in confined areas.
