So, you’ve made a new vehicle, with the latest and greatest ADAS features in it. And now, you want to make sure it’s got the best NCAP rating so you can prove to consumers that it’s as safe as possible. If you’re selling your car across borders, one of the first things to understand is what regional variations in ADAS testing there are.
You likely already know that there are multiple NCAP organisations around the world – and you probably also know that Euro NCAP is usually regarded as the most advanced and most stringent in its requirements. So, you might think, as long as you can demonstrate compliance with Euro NCAP, getting your vehicle through the other global NCAP tests will be a breeze, right?
Not necessarily.
In this blog, we’re going into some of the lesser-known variations in NCAP testing – and what they mean for ADAS test engineers.
Why are the NCAP tests all different?
There are a few different factors that influence what is included in a regional NCAP test.
+ The characteristics of the roads and traffic in different parts of the world.
+ Some governments more tightly control the NCAP tests in their country than others.
+ Existing safety standards in the region need to be taken into account.
That last part is important to understand. It’s worth remembering that the NCAP standards are designed to do two things: first, to give consumers a way to understand the safety of the vehicles available to them; second, to drive up the safety of vehicles over time. Some NCAP organisations, including Euro NCAP and NHTSA (the US NCAP organisation), have been operating for longer than NCAPs such as BNCAP (India’s NCAP organisation). They’ve had more time to raise the standards of vehicle safety, and can therefore insist that vehicles need ADAS technology to achieve the highest star ratings.
3 region-specific NCAP tests
There will be other regional variations in NCAP tests – and those will continually change as different organisations update their testing standards. But to give you an idea of the difference you can encounter:
- ASEAN NCAP doesn’t have an autonomous emergency braking (AEB) or collision test for vulnerable road users (VRU)s such as pedestrians and cyclists. Instead, they test those systems in relation to motorcycles and other P2Ws (powered two-wheelers). This reflects the large volume of P2Ws on the road in Asia compared to other parts of the world.
- CNCAP has a false positive AEB test, ensuring that AEB doesn’t deploy when a vehicle in an adjacent lane brakes, or when the car drives over a metal plate on the road. Those metal plates are common in Chinese roadworks, and are known to generate false positives in AEB systems.
- NHTSA is the only assessment programme that tests rollover resistance in its vehicles. This is because in the US, accidents where the vehicle has rolled are deemed more dangerous than other kinds of accidents.
Reading that list, the challenge for ADAS testing professionals should be apparent. To get the maximum star ratings in all the markets you want to launch your vehicle, the range of tests you need to complete is far higher than launching in one market.
Solving ADAS vehicle testing complexity
As we all know, conducting more ADAS tests puts pressure on test engineers in a few ways:
- Their time with test vehicles and the proving ground is put under more pressure – there are more tests to complete, often in the same time.
- With that in mind, the tolerance for errors is lower. There’s less room than ever for tests that fail due to technical errors.
- More tests creates more data that needs to be processed to demonstrate compliance with standards.
To relieve that pressure, you need an ADAS testing solution that:
- Is demonstrably reliable, so you know you’ll get the data you need, every time.
- Gives you tools that make it easy to process your data and get it into the required format for NCAP compliance.
- Lets you set up a wide variety of tests, including those with autonomous platforms for VRUs or target vehicles, with minimum fuss.
- Integrates with other sensors and platforms, such as NVIDIA DRIVE (a must for those testing ADAS on autonomous vehicles).
OxTS is the reference system for Euro NCAP testing
OxTS has a long heritage in vehicle testing. Not only have our (INS) inertial navigation systems been used as the reference system for Euro NCAP, we’ve spent years developing our specialist ADAS testing solution, RT-Range. RT-Range give you an easy way to monitor the movement and behaviour of your vehicle under test (VUT) and a range of both moving and stationary targets. Our GNSS/INS devices are fully compatible with driving robots, support CAN input and output, and are chosen by many global OEMs as the GNSS/INS of choice for ADAS testing.
Best of all, our technology uses advanced algorithms and clever calibrations to deliver performance comparable to expensive fibre-optic gyroscope (FOG) GNSS/INS devices, while using much more reasonably priced MEMS technology. That makes our ADAS testing solution much more affordable than you might expect – perfect for handling the breadth and complexity of ADAS testing needed to achieve the best NCAP star ratings possible, all around the world.
Solution Brief: ADAS Testing
If you’d like to learn more about how to build a best-in-class ADAS testing solution, including key considerations for your project, click below to download our solution brief.
Read the solution brief to learn how you can use OxTS INS devices to take ADAS feature testing to new heights.
The RT3000 v4 is the latest GNSS/INS technology from OxTS. To learn more about how the device can help you conduct ADAS testing for your heavy vehicles faster and more efficiently, contact us using the form below.
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