“Ambitious research projects are the basis for testing and proving innovations in practice. The expertise and intelligent minds of KIT and its partners create promising conditions for the TyRoN project. A unique consortium is dedicated to a promising idea to actively shape the future of mobility. This is a great opportunity to experience on-site what can be achieved with the support of data innovations. The Federal Ministry of Digitalization and Transport supports and promotes innovative projects like TyRoN to make mobility more efficient, safer, and more sustainable,” said Michael Theurer, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Digitalization and Transport.

“In the transformation of our mobility system, reducing loud and disturbing noises in road traffic is also an important factor,” said Professor Thomas Hirth, Vice President for Innovation and International Affairs at KIT. “In the TyRoN project, we have brought together an excellent consortium with partners from the automotive industry and the scientific community, as well as the expertise of KIT in AI and mobility research. Together, we aim to achieve significant milestones towards a low-noise road traffic environment.”

In Germany, new types of vehicles must undergo a procedure before being approved to ensure that they do not exceed the legal limits for noise emissions. “For the approval of a new vehicle type, the noise level during passing by microphones on a specially paved road surface is measured and should be below the legal limit. However, the test environment is only partially comparable to driving situations on real roads,” explained Michael König from the Institute of Vehicle System Technology at KIT, who coordinates TyRoN. Large amounts of noise emission measurement data are necessary for the development of new measures to comply with the limits on normal roads. “This is only possible with great effort: there are a variety of combinations of vehicle, tires, road surface, and environmental conditions that can occur in real traffic. A precise prediction of noise emissions would greatly reduce the number of necessary measurements. Therefore, we need better models than those currently available,” said König.

Consideration of road surface, tires, driving style and weather conditions

The novel computational model is intended to take into account the various influencing parameters of the road, the tire, driving behavior, and weather, and generate a comprehensive database of different pass-by noises. “With the resulting large data collection, we want to derive measures for noise reduction,” said König. “In addition, the computational model should help to improve the conversion of noise measurement results to real traffic. This could allow for the investigation and optimization of more operating conditions with less measurement effort.”

Vehicle fleet records pass-by noise

The development of the model involves a cross-manufacturer vehicle fleet that uses innovative measurement methods to capture pass-by noise in different environments. Meanwhile, a variety of other sensors measure data on the influencing parameters. Using AI methods, a model for predicting pass-by noise is created, which can determine the relevant factors affecting tire-road noise emission. The necessary measurement technology is being developed together with the required AI models in the project and validated through measurements in controlled environments. The research team will publish the models and measurement data in a quality-assured publicly accessible database at the end of the project.

AboutTyRoN

In addition to the Institute of Vehicle System Technology and the Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods at KIT, further partners from the automotive and tire industry as well as from the scientific community are involved in the project: Audi AG, BMW AG, Federal Highway Research Institute, Continental AG, EYYES Deutschland GmbH, Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, RA Consulting GmbH, RWTH Aachen (Institute of Highway Engineering – ISAC), and Volkswagen AG. The Federal Ministry of Digitalization and Transport supports the project within the mFUND innovation initiative for three years with approximately 3 million euros. The total cost of the project amounts to nearly 3.7 million euros. (ase)

Further information: https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/DE/Artikel/DG/mfund-projekte/tyron.html

About the mFUND funding program of the BMDV

The Federal Ministry of Digitalization and Transport (BMDV) has been supporting data-based research and development projects for digital and connected mobility of the future since 2016 as part of the mFUND innovation initiative. The project funding is complemented by active professional networking between stakeholders from politics, business, administration, and research, as well as the provision of open data on the Mobility Data Space