PLM system developer Dassault Systèmes’ booth at this week’s Autonomous Vehicle Technology Expo in Novi really caught visitors’ attention with a fully fledged driving simulator running the company’s signature product, 3DEXPERIENCE.
Solution consultant Kandarp Patel explains, “We are a product development company – we help in the development of any product, all the way from concept to delivery. Eighty percent of the cars and planes you see out there are made using our software. We can do everything virtually, not only driving-wise; we can also simulate the crash, how the dirt is going to be collected on the sensors and so on.
“Our software is all off the shelf. Our main platform is the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Underneath, there are a number of tools – some are used to design things, some to simulate, some to manufacture or do data analytics.
“New releases are coming out all the time and we are constantly acquiring companies to expand our capabilities. For example, earlier this year we acquired Stimulus, which is especially useful for writing software.
“What we’ve been working on a lot recently is integrating the mechanical design of a vehicle with the rest of the simulation, because that’s the final piece of your autonomous vehicle. You need to simulate the mechanical aspect together with the software. If someone is writing AI software, they need to know it will work well together with the hardware.”