Keynote Speakers

Keynotes

Ms. Yue Li

CTO and co-founder, IAE Group, China

“Practice for scenario based simulation accelerating the safe application of autonomous driving”

Car manufactures are exploring commercial implementation scenarios for autonomous driving, hoping to enhance product strength through this technology; Practical and feasible solutions are needed in regulation to form positive guidance and access. In the process of landing for autonomous driving, simulation testing based on a large-scale and systematic scenario library will play a key role in productization and market access. This keynote will focus on sharing the practical experience in China of scenario based L4 autonomous driving simulation testing.


Dr. Behrang Keshavarz

Senior Scientist, KITE Research Institute, UHN, Canada
Adjunct Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada

“Motion sickness: A challenge in real and simulated driving situations”

Motion sickness affects one in three people, with vomiting, nausea, dizziness, or headache being just few of the many symptoms. Two global mega-trends make motion sickness a major challenge to healthcare and industry in the upcoming decades: fully automated vehicles and Virtual Reality (VR) applications. Motion sickness is a serious concern for both technologies, jeopardizing their success and overall acceptance. In this presentation, Dr. Keshavarz will provide an overview of the phenomenon of motion sickness, with a specific focus on theoretical considerations, factors influencing individual susceptibility, measurement techniques, and potential solutions.


Pr. George Drettakis

Research Director, Inria, France

“The 3D Gaussian Splatting Adventure: Past, Present and Future”

Neural rendering has advanced at outstanding speed in recent years, with the advent of Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), typically based on volumetric ray-marching. Last year, Pr. Drettakis’s group developed an alternative approach, 3D Gaussian Splatting, that has better performance for training, display speed, and visual quality and has seen widespread adoption both academically and industrially. In this talk, the 20+ year process leading to the development of this method will be described, including a short historical perspective on image-based and neural rendering over the years, that culminated with 3D Gaussian Splatting. Prof. Drettakis will then discuss 3D Gaussian Splatting, which provides high-quality real-time rendering for novel view synthesis using a novel 3D scene representation based on 3D Gaussians and fast GPU rasterization.
 

Industrial Keynotes

Dr. Richard Romano

Staff Researcher, General Motors, United States
Visiting Professor, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

“Human Centered Vehicle Design in the Age of Agile Software Development: The role of driving simulators”

Driving simulation has been used for over thirty years by a range of automotive companies as part of the vehicle design process.  Recently, as part of the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) development process, agile software development has been integrated into the vehicle development process to leverage the wide set of benefits of the agile method.  Typically driving simulators are developed by dedicated technical experts along side human factors specialists with experience with driving simulator-based experiments. This presentation will outline the history of driving simulation in the context of supporting the vehicle design process, typically as part of a waterfall development process as well as the typical agile software development method. 
 

Dr. Craig Brown

Director, BrownSim Ltd, United Kingdom
 

“ProCue: Outcue the Competition”

Would you like to maximize the value of your simulator activities without additional R&D spend. Rejuvenate an old simulator instead of buying a new one? Would you like your sim drivers to have absolute confidence?
The majority of simulators in industry are underutilized. This is because the tuning or development of cueing algorithms is a time consuming process, one that cannot always be commercially justified. In the extreme case, bad cueing may render a multi-million dollar simulator worthless! 
Given these challenges, ProCue was conceived. With ProCue, one can fully realize the theorized and advertised potential of motion simulators, freeing your team to focus more on value generation and less on cueing research. In this keynote, Dr. Brown will show you how to “outcue” the competition.

Ms. Tille Karoline Rupp

Head of Simulation, Porsche Engineering, Germany
 

“Driving Innovation: The Power of Simulation, AI, and Big Data in Accelerating Development & Validation”

As automated driving systems become more complex, efficient and robust validation methods are essential. By leveraging simulation, AI, and Big Data, we aim to shorten development and validation cycles, following the left shift principle to detect and resolve issues early.

This keynote highlights the role of automation throughout the entire V-model, ensuring seamless toolchains from development to validation. Standardized, reusable, and consistent data enable Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) testing, as well as driving simulators (Driver-in-the-Loop – DiL), on a shared foundation. In combination with an intelligent test concept, they form the key to efficient validation.

Prof. Bernhard Schick

CEO, MdynamiX and Head of Institute for Driving Assistance and Connected Mobility (IFM), University of Applied Sciences Kempten

“Hardware-in-the-Loop for Enhancing Steering Experience in Driving Simulators”

Test drives are expensive, time-consuming, and often difficult to implement, yet they provide essential insights. The goal is to shift more development into simulations and reduce the number of prototypes, but virtual approaches reach their limits when subjective evaluations are crucial. Driving simulators can help bridge this gap — provided they realistically replicate the driving feel. In particular, authentic steering feel is key to high-quality assessments for almost all relevant use-cases, but is difficult to simulate purely virtually. This presentation introduces MdynamiX’s Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) solutions, which integrate e.g. real steering systems into simulators, enabling a new level of driving realism and evaluation quality, including high-frequency dynamics and road surface contact. It is complemented by insights from participant and expert studies, concrete development use cases, and highlights further potential for new applications.

Dr. Joost Venrooij

Project Lead Real-time Multibody Simulation, BMW AG, Germany
 

“Utilizing BMW‘s driving simulation center: virtual development, real challenges”

In 2021, BMW inaugurated the world’s largest driving simulation center, a pivotal element of the company’s virtualization strategy aimed at achieving significant cost reductions in the vehicle development process. Realizing this goal necessitates not only the development of innovative virtualization methodologies and simulation techniques, but also their effective operationalization and utilization. This presentation will provide an exclusive behind-the-scenes perspective on the challenges we faced—and the solutions we implemented—in bringing BMW’s driving simulation center to life. It will outline how advancements in vehicle modeling methods, motion cueing techniques, validation approaches, and some practical lessons learned, were brought together to make virtual vehicle development a reality.