Research Projects - Vehicle Concepts and Design

Disruptive Modular Architecture for Agile, Automated Vehicle Concepts

UNICARagil unites the competences of leading German universities in the field of automated driving and selected industrial partners, to rethink future mobility and vehicles with their development processes. Within the scope of the four-year project, the consortium led by Prof. Eckstein will develop disruptive, modular, agile and automated vehicle concepts. The development avoids inherited liabilities in order to provide solutions for challenges imposed by emerging mobility trends and to set impulses for the future. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany fund the project with an overall budget of 26 million Euros.

The universities of Aachen, Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Munich, Stuttgart, Ulm and Karlsruhe partnered with the companies Atlatec GmbH, flyXdrive GmbH, iMAR Navigation GmbH, IPG Automotive GmbH, Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG and Vires Simulationstechnologie GmbH to develop fully automated and driverless electric vehicles based on the latest results of research into automated and connected driving as well as electromobility. The basis for this is a modular and scalable vehicle concept consisting of a utility and drive unit. It can be flexibly adapted to a wide range of applications in logistics and passenger transport. Automated and locally emission-free vehicles can meaningfully exploit these in particular. Core elements of the research and development work are the novel architectures both in hardware and in software.

In addition to overall project management, ika is responsible for the conceptual design of the modular driving platform and the construction of the AUTOshuttle, one of the four vehicles. In this vehicle version, passengers can ride along like being in a train, whereby several electronically connectable vehicles behave like a rail vehicle. Freight can also be transported as an option, as the seats are very space saving and flexible.

The ika is also responsible for the design of the dynamic modules, which combine the tasks of steering, suspension, driving and braking through the integration of modern wheel hub drives. The modules enable movement behavior in road traffic through steering angles of up to 90°. The control units required to control the modules are developed and validated as dedicated hardware.

Future vehicles will be supported by intelligent infrastructure and cloud systems. UNICARagil focuses on concepts in this research area as well. At ika, a cloud-based environment model for improved perception of automated vehicles and a novel collective traffic memory will be designed and implemented.

With more than 100 project members throughout Germany, the project combines the fields of mechanical engineering and vehicle technology with electrical engineering, computer science, logistics, ergonomics, psychology and vehicle design.