Quick-Start Launch for Open-Source Driving Simulator Software OpenDS

White_c presents its new open-source platform www.OpenDS.eu, a driving simulator for research and development in the automotive industry as well as scientific studies. This tool - revolutionary thanks to its open approach - after one month already has a participant’s share of more than 140 developers from all over the industry.

The software is programmed entirely in Java and is based on the jMonkeyEngine framework, a scene graph based game engine which is mainly used for rendering and physics computation. The makers of www.OpenDS.eu invite the developer community world-wide to contribute to the functionality in order to reach a distinct high level quality of the product, as well as to actively disseminate the open-source software.

For the first time in the development of OpenDS, a seamless cylindrical projection with multiple projectors allows the rendering of the road ahead, as well as a view of the simulation environment through the side windows. The demonstrator was presented for the first time at last months’ CeBIT, the most influential IT trade show in Germany. It invited visitors for a drive through a complex environment with photorealistic textures, traffic and traffic light simulation, and different weather conditions, and urged the driver to be in control of the simulation from inside a real demonstrator vehicle positioned in front of a curved screen.

"Through the spearhead funding of EIT ICT Labs, we were able to launch the software one year earlier than originally planned”, says Dr. Christian Müller, CEO at white-c. “This is both extremely good for the progress in our research project and for the community world-wide”.

Safe traffic

Mobility is an extremely important societal issue. Total costs of accidents in Europe are approximately 5 billion Euros whereas traffic jams provoke a total annual cost of 1.5 billion. Some 72% of all driven kilometers are achieved by car. The number of injured people in traffic is significant: in 2011 120.000 persons were handicapped by traffic accidents, 240.000 were heavily injured and 1.5 million were infringed. In the same year 30.000 persons died in traffic.

white_c is a pioneer in bringing forward traffic safety, focusing on accident documentation and accident analysis as well as operation concepts. With the launch of its driving simulation research, white_c answers to the request by the European Union to come up with inventions for safer traffic and brings forward an open innovation platform for measurements that boost safety of all traffic participants.

white_c is a spin-off company of German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence - DFKI’s Automotive Group, being the main contributor to the original free software. The core part of OpenDS is funded by the European Commission (7th Framework Programme) in the so-called GetHomeSafe project. The open-source project receives additional funding by EIT ICT Labs and its Open-Source Booster, a funding instrument dedicated to open-source software.

More information on www.OpenDS.eu and on our OpenDS LinkedIn Group.