World’s most advanced facility of its kind provides unique possibilities for development of autonomous driving systems – Construction begins as part of the “FIZ Future” masterplan; completion in 2020; investment of around 100 million euros.
Munich. The BMW Group’s new Driving Simulation Centre is taking shape in Munich’s Milbertshofen district. In mid-August, the company began construction of the world’s most advanced facility for the simulation of real-world driving situations at the FIZ Research and Innovation Centre in the north of the city. The new building provides unique possibilities for virtual testing of advanced driving assistance systems and innovative display and control concepts. This will, above all, strengthen the development expertise of the BMW Group in the field of autonomous driving. A unique feature of the facility is the high-fidelity simulator, in which longitudinal, transverse and rotational movements of a vehicle can be represented simultaneously and therefore very realistically. This allows the BMW engineers to “bring the road into the lab,” in order to conduct studies just as if they were taking place in real-world road traffic. For the first time, urban driving situations – which represent a particular challenge in the context of autonomous driving – can now also be reproduced realistically, allowing vehicle responses to be constantly enhanced.
Automated driving is one of the main technology areas which the BMW Group has designated as being of central importance in its NUMBER ONE > NEXT corporate strategy. These areas are also addressed to a significant degree by the expansion of development capacity at the FIZ. Construction of the new Driving Simulation Centre is part of the FIZ Future masterplan, which calls for the BMW Group’s central development facility to grow by some 50 percent through several stages up to 2050. The foundation stone for the first phase was laid in autumn 2017 and now the start of work on the new Driving Simulation Centre marks a further stage in the project. It is being built in a central area between the Projekthaus and the Aerodynamic Test Centre. Covering a total floor area of 11,400 square metres, the facility will comprise 14 simulators and usability labs employing 157 people. BMW Group Research is planning to start work here in 2020. The investment in the new Driving Simulation Centre is estimated at around 100 million euros.
Several decades of experience in the field of driving simulation.Advanced driving simulators have become an indispensable tool, especially for the development and testing of driving assistance systems and display and control concepts. They allow the functionality and suitability for customer use of new systems to be tested in detail while still at a very early stage of development. The driving simulator serves as a link between the functional testing of individual hardware and software components on the one hand and road testing with complete systems on the other. The BMW Group has many years of experience in using such facilities. Back in the early 1990s, static driving simulators were employed in the development of BMW cars. In order to model what happens on the road in even greater detail, the BMW Group has also operated a dynamic driving simulator since 2006. In the face of rising demands on the capacity of these facilities, a further dynamic driving simulator was installed in the BMW Group Research and Technology House in Garching in 2016.
High-dynamic and high-fidelity simulators for automated driving functions.