NI announced it has acquired monoDrive, a provider of ultra-high fidelity simulation software for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle development. The acquisition expands NI’s reach in the ADAS and simulation markets and will enable NI’s transportation customers to accelerate the development, test, and deployment of safer autonomous systems.
The design cycles for ADAS are complex and automotive OEMs and suppliers need systems that streamline the transitions between simulation, lab-based and physical test environments to ultimately create safer vehicles. Today, disparate tools cause siloed processes, time-to-market delays, and lead to higher costs that reduce the pace of innovation and hinder the quality of advanced technologies.
NI will leverage monoDrive’s expertise in signal processing and advanced simulation to help customers accelerate the delivery of ADAS through high fidelity driving environments capable of modeling numerous sensors and thousands of real-time scenarios. This approach combined with NI’s software-connected systems will help transportation customers streamline the transitions between simulation, lab-based and physical testing environments. In doing so, NI will now enable vehicle manufacturers and suppliers to accelerate the shift to self-driving vehicles.
Chad Chesney, NI Vice President and General Manager of the transportation business unit said that they welcome the monoDrive employees to NI and look forward to collectively accelerating their growth ambitions for their transportation business. The combination of monoDrive’s advanced software and NI’s strong position in ADAS will enable smooth transitions across their customer’s software validation workflows. This in turn delivers greater test efficiency, coverage and more realistic testing scenarios to help automotive manufacturers get safe and reliable autonomous vehicles on the road faster.
Celite Milbrandt, CEO of monoDrive also stated that the monoDrive team is excited to join NI’s transportation business unit and accelerate the deployment of their high-fidelity simulation products. Over the past five years, monoDrive has achieved a leadership position in vehicle simulation. They believe the combination of NI and monoDrive products will help their customers accelerate their goal of deploying safer vehicles.
In conjunction with this acquisition, NI also announced a strategic collaboration with Ansys, the global provider of engineering simulation. Ansys’ industry-leading simulation solution enables sensor vendors to simulate the fundamental physics of their radars, LiDARs, and cameras from design through manufacturing. Together, NI and Ansys will help solve the complex challenge of recreating real-world simulation to validate sensors and inject data into software and hardware under test in real-time. This shared focus will provide customers with critical insights into how products will perform in the market by bridging the worlds of simulated and physical test with more precise outcomes.
Matt Zack, VP Corporate Development and Global Partnerships at Ansys said that Ansys is committed to building world-class products in an open ecosystem. Collaborating with NI complements this strategy, positioning Ansys to provide more comprehensive solutions to their customers’ engineering challenges. Combining Ansys’ physics-based sensor simulation solutions with NI’s driving simulation and testing infrastructure will enable mutual customers to more quickly develop safer ADAS technology.
