Volvo Autonomous Solutions team up with Foretellix

Partnership to jointly address challenges of large-scale verification of autonomous driving systems

VOLVO Autonomous Solutions have signed a partnership agreement with verification experts Foretellix to jointly address the challenges of large-scale verification of autonomous driving systems on public highways and in confined areas, such as quarries.

The partnership will see the joint creation of a coverage-driven verification solution that will allow massive-scale testing of millions of different scenarios, validating Volvo Autonomous Solutions’ vehicles and machines and dealing with anything they might encounter within their specified operational design domain (ODD). In particular, the partnership will focus on providing high levels of safety and productivity.

Volvo Autonomous Solutions say the ability of the coverage-driven solution to orchestrate large-scale simulation and conduct the big data analysis required will lead to a substantial reduction in costs and time to market, ensuring faster operational readiness and the ability to safely scale-up the system across multiple sites and ODDs.

Foretellix, pioneers in the commercialization of coverage-driven methodologies for automated driving systems verification, have developed a novel verification platform that uses intelligent automation and big data analytics tools that co-ordinate and monitor millions of driving scenarios, to expose bugs and edge cases, including the most extreme cases.

Volvo Autonomous Solutions will jointly adapt Foretellix’s verification system for both highways and confined-area applications. Both firms will use the open measurable scenario description language (M-SDL) created by Foretellix, which simplifies the capture, reuse and sharing of scenarios, and can specify any mix of scenarios and operating conditions, to identify previously unknown hazards.

Last year, both companies conducted a successful pre-study that evaluated the Foretellix portfolio and its potential value in confined areas.

‘Volvo Autonomous Solutions believe in a collaborative verification concept – one that uses open standards,’ said Magnus Liljeqvist, global technology manager at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. ‘The partnership with Foretellix gives us access to the state-of-the-art verification tools, accelerating our time to market.’

‘This partnership is a significant milestone for the industry as it is the first time that large-scale coverage-driven verification will be used for verification of autonomous driving systems in confined areas,’ added Ziv Binyamini, chief executive officer and co-founder of Foretellix. ‘Our partnership will combine the expertise of the two companies and set a new standard in the verification of automated driving systems, boosting both safety and productivity.’