The artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the functioning of the automotive industry.

Autonomous vehicles might be the first element coming to mind when thinking of an example on the impact of AI in the car industry, but it is not the only one. AI can not only improve vehicle performance but also enhance their design process. This is precisely the aim of the UPSCALE project by applying Machine Learning techniques to Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) methods. 

Historically, CAE tools have been an invaluable mean for product development in many industry sectors, and, in particular, in the automotive sector. Despite its notable contribution, over all these years, there have been no major changes or significant improvements in their application. To break this pattern, the UPSCALE’s consortium aims at creating and applying machine learning-driven simulation workflows. This would reduce development time through speeding up simulation time by orders of magnitude in crash and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. AI-CAE integration would lead to securing simulation results faster, cheaper and more accurate. Moreover the objective of UPSCALE would also be to CAE processes to become fully automated and adapted as a software solution for the automotive industry.

Challenges of the Project

Taken into account the large number of existing vehicles with different characteristics, one of the main challenges for the project to succeed is being able to feed and train AI algorithms with enough information to function. This is particularly challenging because until now AI and machine learning have been used to solve proof of concept simulation models, UPSCALE faces the challenge of demonstrating that AI can also deal with real industrial simulation models, such as full-size vehicle aerodynamics or crash.

Because for big challenges, big responses and big solutions are needed UPSCALE consortium has already began to work. From November 2018 until April 2022, thanks to funding obtained from Horizon 2020, the European Research and Innovation programme, a team composed of universities, research laboratories, European automotive OEMs, software companies and an AI-SME, specialized in machine learning, will be working to achieve the above-mentioned goal and make the European automotive industry more competitive. 

Read more on the project and follow the progress achieved through the UPSCALE’s website and newsletter.