The Daimler Truck Development and Testing Centre (EVZ) in Wörth am Rhein is using high-tech test equipment to explore the limits of the brand’s safety assistance systems.

The most recent, extensive tests at the EVZ primarily centred on assistance systems that will be used in the various Daimler Truck trucks and buses from April 2024.

Alongside the Mercedes-Benz Truck Actros, Arocs, eActros and Atego, test vehicles also included Daimler Buses and Mercedes-Benz Special Trucks models.

The focus is particularly on Active Brake Assist 6, the new Frontguard Assist, Active Sideguard Assist 2, Active Drive Assist 3 and Traffic Sign Assist.

Around the world, up to 60 Daimler Truck vehicles undergo endurance testing throughout the year. The mileage covered in the process to safeguard the functionality of the new systems will amount to around 5,000,000km between 2020 and the end of 2023.

“Tests like those in Wörth are of pivotal importance to us in order to incorporate the results and findings gained from them into optimising existing driver assistance systems and the development of new safety features – from the small Atego to special-purpose trucks,” said Mustafa Üstertuna, head of software and electronics at Daimler Truck.

Daimler Truck had already installed numerous systems in its various model series long before they were required by law – as is currently the case with the EU Commission’s General Safety Regulation (GSR) 2019/2144, for instance. Since 6 July 2022, the regulation has been specifying that, for new vehicle types from July 2024, more systems must be available as standard equipment for all new vehicles as part of a gradually enforced obligation of advanced systems.

Assistance systems must be extensively tested before they can go into series production. These tests are carried out at Daimler Truck throughout the year, in particular at the Development and Testing Centre (EVZ) in Wörth am Rhein as well as in Finland, Spain and Japan and on the test track of Daimler Truck North America in Madras, Oregon.

270 degree sensor fusion technology

The basis for the tested assistance systems is a new electronics platform and thus the so-called sensor fusion involving merging radar and camera data for a more comprehensive view to the front and side. For this purpose, the electronics platform delivers 20 times higher data processing rates. The six installed sensors – four lateral short-range radar sensors at the front and rear, one long-range radar sensor at the front in the centre and the multifunction camera in the windscreen – now cover 270 degrees around the vehicle.

At EVZ, a wide variety of scenarios can be reproduced in a safe environment, such as the tail end of a traffic jam, overtaking manoeuvres or turning scenarios. And all this on different road profiles that reflect the roads of the world. In this way, Daimler can recreate the same conditions for test vehicles that apply in South America, South Korea, Africa and, of course, Europe.