07 Apr Accreditation in progress: Euro NCAP
In order to become the first and only Austrian Euro NCAP laboratory to be accredited, ALP.Lab is currently conducting extensive tests at the new DSD test track in Hofkirchen, Upper Austria.
Euro NCAP (European New Car Assessment Programme) was founded in 1996 and is known for its five-star safety rating system for cars. The Republic of Austria is the eighth governmental institution and the sixth EU Member State directly participating in the Euro NCAP programme. The republic is officially represented by the Ministry for Climate Action (BMK) and will receive technical support from Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). Vehicle testing, pending approval of the local facilities later this year, will be carried out at the Safety Labs Austria, which consist of the newly developed DSD test center in Hofkirchen/Traunkreis in collaboration with ALP.Lab for active safety, Capgemini Engineering Austria (previously Altran) in Gratkorn for passive safety as well as the Research Center Virtual Vehicle and the Vehicle Safety Institute of TU Graz for their expertise in the field of virtual testing.
The accreditation process involves hundreds of tests with an actual production vehicle, in our case an Audi A3. Our comprehensive test equipment consisting of steering robots, platforms, cable pull systems, targets as well as GPS Systems and analyzing software is used.
Here, for example, is a current test with a pedestrian crossing the street directly in front of the car, which then has to stop automatically. In this particular test, we used a target system from 4a that delivers the data directly to the Humanetics system with its steering robot. In this way, no post-processing of the data is necessary; instead, it can be evaluated immediately with the help of the AVL Smart ADAS Analyzer.