SCALE receives BMBF funding to develop intelligent assistance systems for SDM products

On October 1, 2019, SCALE, together with its partners SIDACT and the Fraunhofer Institute SCAI, launched a research project on “Virtual product development using intelligent assistance systems” (short: ViPriA). The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for a period of three years. Project coordinator is SCALE. Associated industrial partners are AUDI, Porsche and Volkswagen.

The project aims to develop intelligent assistance systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning approaches (ML) to support engineers in simulation-based, virtual product development. The project aims to develop intelligent assistance systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning approaches (ML) to support engineers in simulation-based, virtual product development. With the help of intelligent assistance functions, calculation engineers are to be supported in the development process with complex decisions and to be relieved of routine tasks.

In practice, calculation engineers are to be supported in two essential stages of the development process: (1) On the one hand through the development of an intelligent assistance system, which makes design suggestions to the user when creating a numerical simulation and provides result forecasts. (2) On the other hand, by successively automating the analysis of complex simulation results. The system should provide feedback to the user about unexpected behavior of simulations. The analysis of the simulation results is not limited to the evaluation of scalar function variables, but also detects unusual or undesirable system behavior, which is also visually processed.

The core product of SCALE is an SDM system (simulation data management) consisting of the applications CAViT and LoCo. The management of result data from testing and simulation takes place in CAViT. Simulation models and CAE processes are managed in LoCo. The applications are used by several German automobile manufacturers.

The results of the research project will flow into the development of a new, integrated product generation. Users should have access to the latest technologies in their daily work. Martin Liebscher, project leader of ViPriA at SCALE: “The use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning plays an increasingly important role in the automotive sector and beyond. With the research project ViPriA we want to use the chance to launch the new product generation with innovative and strategically important technologies”.