Dr. Steffen Kutter
Head of Autonomous Driving and Driving Strategies
Technical University of Dresden, Dresden Institute of Automobile Engineering                    
Chair: Vehicle Mechatronics

Connected functions for highly automated vehicles is one research area of the chairs FZM and VLP. One part of this field is predictive automated longitudinal control which is approached using methods of optimal control. The aim is to increase traffic throughput and minimize energy requirements using optimal speed trajectories of vehicles and cooperative driving functions such as platooning.

The development of the functionalities is model-based. In addition to the model of the vehicle and automated driving functions, a detailed modeling of the immediate environment, including infrastructure elements (for example traffic light signals) as well as traffic flows, is also required.

For this purpose, a Simulation framework has been developed which is being presented in this article. The framework is covering traffic flow Simulation (SUMO), driving function Simulation (Simulink) as well as vehicle dynamics and environmental Simulation (CarMaker).