MORAI uses targeted simulation for ADAS and AV testing
South Korean startup MORAI is making an impact within the ADAS and AV sector with its simulation solution, MORAI SIM: Drive. The innovative digital twin simulation platform is tailored to ‘target locations’.
“Nothing can replace real-world testing; however, an enormous amount of time and cost is needed,” explained Hyunjin Park, tech team leader at MORAI, live at Automotive Testing Expo Europe, which is being held adjacent to ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Technology Expo. “Vehicles didn’t need to be tested as much when they were solely driven by humans, but now that we are giving more power to a computer, more testing is needed; even more so with autonomy.”
Hyunjin revealed that by using targeted simulation, MORAI has helped stakeholders and customers reduce real-world testing by 50%: “For a company that might drive six million miles to test a vehicle, they will instead drive three million miles, saving on costs.”
“MORAI uses its ADAS and AV simulation platforms to enable OEMs to test every single component beforehand, running software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and vehicle-in-the-loop tests for all three stages of development,” Hyunjin continued.
The company provides stakeholders with a simulation environment based on actual roads, sensor models and edge cases to test their ADAS. It uses HD map data from several companies and ingests it into its software suites, creating road meshes from that data in a fast, automated process. MORAI SIM can also be used to trick a real test vehicle into thinking it is in a simulation by combining vehicle-in-the-loop and mixed reality testing.
“All simulation is an approximate representation of the real world. MORAI provides sensor models within a highly detailed environment, provided by simulation. Visual realism is important for recognizing objects in a scene with computer vision-based AD or ADAS applications. We are also focused on other types of realism: vehicle dynamics and the realism of scenarios themselves,” concluded Hyunjin.