Virtual verification of illumination

Abstract

Illumination content in the cars is increasing all across the automotive industry to solve various customer problems, and also for aesthetic purposes. It is not only an aesthetically pleasing premium design feature but also a means of communication with the user. To stand out in the current competition, having an excellent illumination content with great execution is of utmost importance. This also means that the perceived quality of light by users should be appreciable. The high lead time and huge costs involved with physical prototypes demand a better way of working; therefore, working with virtual prototypes is necessary. With increasingly complex illumination content, and to find out issues earlier in the product development phase, virtual verification on the concepts is paramount, because this way might reduce the overall cost of product testing. This virtual verification would be more reliable if the car software that is coded for the illumination functionality can be included, i.e., logic verification, in the verification process. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate a few software that can support the virtual verification of dynamic illumination. This thesis work also aims to identify a logic verification method that can be integrated into the virtual verification software and to draw a technology roadmap to implement the solution at Perceived Quality Illumination(PQI), Volvo Car Group(VCG). To address the problem of logic verification, the authors have investigated different logic verification methods. This thesis, therefore, investigates the contemporary methods of virtual verification at VCG with the intent of improving the current way of working. The results consisted of the critical analysis of interviews, which led to requirement lists. It also consists of comparisons between different software and different logic verification methods based on experiments and data from interviews. In conclusion, performing simulations and verifying the different requirements at the right stage of the product development phase helps to reduce the lead time of the project. The tool to be used for logic verification purposes is MIL up to DSM5, and SIL, after that, should be put into use. Because of SPEOS’s high fidelity simulation results, it should continue to be in use. The software to be used for dynamic illumination verification with the ability to include SIL is Unity. A proposal for the virtual verification process across the timeline of the VPDS has been presented, considering the situation at VCG.