dSPACE in Paderborn, a sunny late summer day. Audible tedious and always just a few centimeters the motor rotates a linkage times to the right, sometimes to the left. Testing engineer Tobias Rodehüser describes:
“We are here now in the workshop and see a virtual tour on the Hockenheimring The steering test rig moves as the car would move on the road, such as the steering. would behave. “
Neither driver nor car nor Hockenheimring are real. All simulated software. What looks like a computer game, but has a serious background: Tobias Rodehüser tests whether the control programs for cars work really sure. Because of it, there are now many: steering and ignition system, brakes and rangefinder, rain sensors and parking sensors, power management and suspension, Navigation and light – monitored everything and governs now a computer
The necessary software developing car producers either themselves. or they give external companies commissioned. Finally, keep the programs in their hands, there is the all-important question: Do they work even in the harsh practice? When heat and cold? On dry asphalt, wet cobblestones? Together with hundreds of other control commands?
Digital tools for increased safety
answers to these questions examined the Paderborn dSPACE SMEs. He developed computer programs – strictly speaking are the digital tools – with which to test the safety of their carmaker control software. The managing partner of the company, Herbert Hanselmann says:
“This is very important for the development, previously determine how the behavior of the steering system is, for example, how does a cobblestone at the driver through the steering wheel. That has little to do with the test rigs, which are known for the long-term test, which here are dynamic tests and behavioral tests that are made during the development phase. “
1988 founded Hanselmann and three other employees of the Institute of Mechatronics University of Paderborn dSPACE. 900 employees, the company now, including its branches in France, UK, US, Japan and China, there are 1,200. Nearly 200 million euros in annual sales are generated by the company, an upward trend.
world leader in Paderborn
dSPACE has now blossomed into a world leader of digital test tools. It is the company goal, Herbert Hanselmann, remained the same from day one:
“The means have changed, there’s a lot more powerful computers nowadays, the software has become incredibly more complex and can also be very, very much more. But in essence, the task is still, signal processing, control systems, software, electronics make engineers available to those who need it in order to develop new control engineering and test. “
expansion of areas of work
The automotive industry is one of the most important customers of dSPACE, the demand for digital test tools is increasing year by year. With the VW-fraud software for “optimization” of the exhaust emissions of diesel engines in test mode, the Paderborn developers have nothing to do, said Herbert Hanselmann.
In general, he tried for some time to expand the areas of work, he explains :
“We have built as a simulator with a very similar application function, namely the representation of the environment, even for an aircraft manufacturer There is then available in the laboratory a cabin with all the electronics and also a piece of hydraulic But.. the airplane is not flying, the aircraft is thinking but it flies because we have built the simulator around it, which makes it. “
For nearly an hour, the virtual car drives on the Hockenheimring his rounds, over cobblestones and ice, fast and slow. In this test, there is a test with motors that move a steering linkage. A lot of effort, which does not have to. Ultimately, can the whole steel bench in a software mirror, says Tobias Rodehüser:
“That there is that we do not test ECUs with the mechanics, but free cut the ECUs at the signal level and simulate the entire mechanism and power electronics.”
It’s also important, says company founder Herbert Hanselmann,
“that our customers can then also perform automated tests. A driver behaves in each experiment a little bit different, or the route has a bit changed, or the temperature has changed a bit, with the simulators it is possible to repeat everything. “
If the end the question of why the headquarters of dSPACE in Paderborn and not in Southern Germany where all the major software companies have their headquarters. ! Because dSPACE was founded by members of the University of Paderborn
True, but that is the topic not yet done, explains Herbert Hanselmann:
“It’s a very nice anecdote that Dieter Zetsche, the CEO today is of Daimler, has a doctorate in this field, and indeed ultimately in Paderborn! “
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