“My contribution to autonomous driving systems can help save lives” – Interview with Mayank, master’s student at VAIVA

Our master’s student Mayank reports on the fascination with automobiles and vehicle safety that has never left him. With his thesis, he is not only deepening his own knowledge of virtual vehicle simulations, but also bringing new impetus to VAIVA. Mayank sees simulation and testing as indispensable components for the safe mobility of the future. Find out exactly why in the interview.

Hi Mayank, you’ve been a master’s student at VAIVA since January. What are you studying? 

Hello, I am currently a Master’s Student in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology with specialization in Automation and Energy Technology at Technische Hochschule Deggendorf. Before coming to Germany in December 2020, I did my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from India and worked for 3.5 years in a Dutch based Energy Industry as an Operations and Project Engineer.

What excites you about the automotive industry and especially about vehicle safety?

Since the beginning of my Engineering in India, I had a fascination towards simulations, drive trains, and automobiles (especially German automobiles 😀 Because of their advancement in technology and innovation). With the advancement in the ADAS technologies leading to autonomously driven vehicles; my fascination towards learning the technology behind such systems and having my contribution in the advancement of such future-oriented autonomous vehicles increased. This led my path to divert here to Germany in the thirst of gaining more knowledge about it.

In Germany, besides my Master’s studies program, through an internship and working student activity, I was able to gain enough basic knowledge by working in ADAS hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) active safety and virtual simulations project. My work on these projects has made me realize vehicle safety is one of the most important aspects of a fully functioning autonomously driven vehicle. I believe, if we want to have “Safe Mobility” on the road, there have to be significant research and feasibility tests for adding more vehicle safety features. This is something that excites me to work in this field, knowing that my contribution to autonomous driving systems can help save lives in the future.

Continuously, my curiousness and eagerness in accumulating more knowledge about autonomous driving systems, virtual simulations, and artificial intelligence still hasn’t quenched, and would keep on learning more about them. 🙂

And why did you choose VAIVA?

I came to know about VAIVA (by the name ASTech) while working as an intern on an ADAS active safety Project at EXPLEO. I was involved with some of the colleagues of VAIVA who were taking care of the functional requirements for the active safety functions.During my work as an intern on the HiL-system for testing and diagnosing active safety features like Spurwechselassistent, Abbiegeassistent, Ausstiegswarnung, and RCTA, I was interested in vehicle simulation and virtual testing technologies. I believe virtual testing of vehicles could be the future, because we can inculcate knowledge about simulations and vehicle physics in testing different features of cars without actually damaging them while testing advanced safety features. I knew that VAIVA is working intensively with virtual simulations, and was interested to take a topic for my Master’s thesis in the area of vehicle simulations. VAIVA justifies perfectly what I was looking for in order to further enhance my knowledge of virtual vehicle simulations.