Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Margot Ruschitzka (TH Köln): "HOW MECHATRONICS CO LEARNING SPACES ARE PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY OF ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE"

Mechatronics Co-Learning Spaces serve as interdisciplinary rooms in which managers and employees from different companies as well as stakeholders from research come together, openly and across companies, to learn online and offline, but also to exchange ideas without competition. The presentation gives an overview of why Mechatronics Co-Learning Spaces lead to better results, how they make staff development new and what is their use for new qualification worlds in detail.

About the author
Margot Ruschitzka graduated with a degree in mathematics from the RWTH in Aachen. She was a research assistant at the Werkzeugmaschinenlabor (WZL) at RWTH Aachen until she received her doctorate. She continued her professional career as a computational engineer at the ABAQUS company in Aachen, then took on the position of authorized signatory at the Center for Industrial Applications of Massive Parallelism (ZIAM) in Herzogenrath, and later became self-employed as a management consultant for innovation and technology. Since 1997, she has been a professor of engineering mathematics and data processing at the TH Köln. Her research activities in the field of optimization of innovation processes and statistical design of experiments are carried out as head of the CAD CAM Center Cologne at the TH Köln.
From 2001 to 2005, she served as Vice-Rector for Research and Development in the university management. Since 2013, she has been head of the M.Sc. Mechatronics study program.
Commitment: 2004 Founding Chair of the Cologne Science Round, 2005 Business Ambassador of the City of Cologne, 2007 Founding President of the Rotary Club of Cologne Kapitol, 2008 Member of the Business Start-Up Study Council of the Berlin School of Economics and Law, 2012 Founding President of Rheinisches Schaufenster e.V, http://www.schau-ins-rheinland.de

Hermann Briese (DMecS): "ROBUSTNESS ANALYSIS AND HIL-TESTS OF STEERING SYSTEMS"

Conventional test benches used for testing the motors and ECUs of steering systems often have non-negligible parasitic characteristics, leading to reduced testing quality. To overcome this, a new test bench for realistic testing of the motors and ECUs has been developed.In the test bench described, the real steering mechanism is replaced by a highly dynamically controlled test bench actuator that is mechanically connected to the steering motor as device under test (DUT) by means of a measuring unit with a specifically tailored sensor concept. The actuator control consists of an observer based state space control with compensation of nonlinear characteristics of the test bench. It is designed accounting for all dynamic components of the test bench setup: test bench actuator, measuring unit, and DUT. The actuator control adjusts the cutting torque in the test bench which would act on the steering motor in the real steering system. The cutting torque is computed by real-time simulation of a detailed model of the steering system that includes all relevant characteristics.
The simple mechanical setup in combination with a sophisticated control leads to a high bandwidth and a testing quality that can hardly be achieved with conventional test benches. Additionally, it enables testing in early phases of development, even when the real steering mechanism might not be available yet. The model based approach allows for detailed investigation of the impact of special characteristics on the steering behavior.

About the author
Hermann Briese received his diploma in engineering from the TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, Germany, in 2003. After that, he was a Research Associate with the Cologne Laboratory of Mechatronics at the TH Köln. Since 2011, he has been CEO of the company DMecS - Development of Mechatronic Systems GmbH & Co. KG. His main field of activity is the development of mechatronic systems, corresponding processes and tools as well as test benches.

Dr. Christian Schyr (AVL): "VIRTUAL TESTING IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS OF HIGHLY AUTOMATED MOBILITY SYSTEMS"

The development and approval of automated vehicles especially in urban areas places new demands on the development methods and tools used. Within the scope of a safety analysis, it must be proven with common methods of ISO26262 (functional safety) such as FMEA, FEA and SOTIF as well as new methods like STPA, that the developed ADAS/AD functions do not cause any unreasonable risk in real driving conditions.
In this context, all relevant degradations or faults must be reliably diagnosed and the appropriate responses automatically initiated by the vehicle. However, for highly automated vehicles especially in urban, rural or highway transport, new requirements arise for the safety verification taken in the development process.
The lecture presents a novel approach for development, integatration and certification of automated mobility systems using scenario-based simulation applied consistently in different X-in-the-Loop test environments.

About the author
Christian Schyr received the Diploma degree in mechanical engineering from the Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, in 1992, the M.Sc. degree in aerospace engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2006.
He is currently a Principal Engineer with the Advanced Solution Laboratory, AL Deutschland GmbH, Karlsruhe. His main research interests are new development methods and tools for highly auto-
mated and electrified mobilitv svstems in the automotive, agricultural, and maritime domains. He has authored more than 100 scientific publications and is also the inventor of eight patents. His professional experience involved positions in software development, product management, and working on numerous research projects in national and European-funded programs and research clusters.
Dr. Schyr has served on the Steering Board of the ARTEMIS Industrial Association and is currently on the Steering Board of the VVMethods Project.

Dr. Bernhard Behr (AVL): "DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF VEHICLE FEATURE TESTING THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF CI/CD AND FUNCTIONAL PROTOTYPING"

The way how automotive systems are currently designed, implemented, and deployed is undergoing a radical shift. This is because of the main technology drivers, namely highly automated driving, connectivity, and electrification as well as new players from the IT industry entering the market with new technologies. Additionally, OEMs have started to take over more responsibility within the software-defined vehicle value chain. Integration efforts are skyrocketing for the ever increasing SW content. Balancing speed with quality is a major challenge. Hence, not only from a pure SW perspective highly integrated collaboration frameworks are necessary to become agile and scalable.
This presentation accentuates - based on practical AVL examples - how to integrate vehicle control unit SW development and functional prototyping across different testing environments like SiL, HiL, Testbed & Vehicle. Variant management and traceability are as well integrated into the pipeline. Examples are provided how to establish a co-Integration environment which is the foundation for scalability, homogeneous build frameworks as well as a high grade of automation.

About the author
Dr.-Ing. Bernhard Behr – AVL Software Business Development Manager - is developing new business ideas as part of the strategic and operational development of the company. In doing so, he pursues the goal of increasing sales with large Vehicle OEMs in Europe, expanding market shares and satisfying customer sales with the expanded or new AVL Software Solution Portfolio. This includes the Verification and Optimization of vehicle features based on a digital twin approach, Data and Process Management, Advanced Analytics as well as CyberSecurity.
Prior to his AVL engagement (which started in mid 2015) he held several positions as Sales and Technical Sales Manager with Dassault Systemes and IBM for more than 23 years. Bernhard graduated from the Technical University of Munich and received a PhD from the Machine Tool Laboratory of the RWTH Aachen.

Dr. Christos Verginis (Uppsala University): "SCALABLE AND ADAPTABLE AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS"

Dr. Christos Verginis gives a brief overview of his past and current research on control, planning, and control of autonomous systems subject to high-level tasks and uncertain dynamics.

About the author
Christos Verginis received his diploma in Electrical Engineering and master's degree in Automation Systems from the National Technical University of Athens in 2013 and 2015, respectively, and his PhD in planning and control of multi-robot systems from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in 2020.
Since February 2022, he has been an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Uppsala University.

Florian Klein (HHVision): "THE VIRTUAL CITY - HOW ARCHITECTURE MODELS CAN SUSTAINABLY ACCELERATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHLY AUTOMATED VEHICLES"

Cities, metropolises and metropolitan regions are growing, new living space is being created and transport concepts are adapting to environmental issues. This is a re- thinking that is taking place in the concepts of mobility as well as in urban planning and thus needs to be rethought at all levels. For this approach, several city models were built in a highly realistic way in the CityInMotion project, with the aim of creat- ing a virtual test environment for highly automated vehicles. In this, the require- ments of vehicle systems were defined, which can be recursively get an access in the construction of a urban-based virtual test field.
In this presentation, the development of the urban planning, the associated traffic infrastructure and the virtual testfield will be shown. Furthermore, examples will show how the virtual architecture models influence the vehicle systems and how the human factor can contribute to the entire system.

About the author
Florian Klein, M.Sc. completed his master’s degree in automotive engineering at the TH Köln in 2018. As a research assistant at the CAD CAM Center Cologne of the TH Köln, he took from 2013 on a teaching duties in the field of virtual product development and acquired new research projects. In 2019, he was appointed head of research and development projects and VR applications at HHVISION. In addition to acquiring economic developments and new research projects, he works on the integration of new methods and working methods in the field of VR. The core task is the investigation between architecture and vehicle technology in virtual reality and upcoming in mixed reality.

Prof. Dr. Subhrakanti Dev (Uppsala University): "INTEGRATED SENSING AND COMMUNICATIONS"

Next generation autonomous vehicles will have hundreds of sensing devices including GPS, LiDARs, radars and sonars, as well as cameras and onboard sensory diagnostics systems. On the other hand, a safe and reliable operation in an autonomous vehicular network high reliability low latency communication between vehicles, vehicle to infrastructure, vehicle to pedestrians, and also vehicle to the cloud etc.
While automotive radar systems have been in operation for a while, integrating radar and communication systems in autonomous cars is a challenging problem due to spectrum scarcity, need for small antennas and integrated hardware. Recent research trends have focused on joint/integrated sensing and communication systems that aim at jointly optimizing the sensing and communication performance through intelligent waveform design and radio resource allocation, and understanding  the fundamental information theoretic performance limits for such systems.
This talk will provide a brief summary of the research challenges and opportunities in this topic.

About the author
Subhrakanti Dey received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Systems Engineering, Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, in 1996.
He is currently a Professor and Head of the Signals and Systems division in the Dept of Electrical Engineering at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has also held professorial positions at NUI Maynooth, Ireland and University of Melbourne, Australia. His current research interests include wireless communications and networks, signal processing for sensor networks, networked control systems, and distributed machine learning and optimization. He is a Senior Editor for IEEE Transactions of Control of Network Systems and IEEE Control Systems Letters, and an Associate Editor for Automatica.