AIMotive’s Validation Solutions for Evolving ADAS/AD Regulations
Over the past few years, the regulatory landscape for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving systems (ADS) has evolved as part of a broader shift within the UN and EU frameworks, complemented by increasingly demanding consumer assessment programs. Validation is increasingly expected to be supported by measurable, structured, and traceable evidence of how the system actually behaves.
Several UN Regulations already provide binding type-approval requirements for ADAS and automated driving systems:
- R171 — Driver Control Assistance Systems (DCAS): covers systems providing sustained lateral and longitudinal assistance while the driver remains responsible for supervision.
- R157 — Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS): defines requirements for conditional automated systems designed to operate only under specific conditions.
- R152 — Advanced Emergency Braking Systems (AEBS): establishes type-approval requirements for automatic emergency braking functions.
- Regulation on Automated Driving Systems (ADS): adopted by WP.29 (World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations) in June 2026, establishing a global UN regulatory framework for fully automated driving systems.
The UN Global Technical Regulation on Automated Driving Systems (ADS GTR) was also adopted during the same WP.29 session. Instead of serving as a direct type-approval regulation, it provides a common international foundation for aligning ADS safety requirements and assessment methods. Together, these developments indicate that system requirements are increasingly evaluated through scenario-based and real-world testing, virtual simulation, and structured safety evidence.
In the European Union, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/1426 sets out the process and technical standards for fully automated driving systems, helping ensure safety and consistency. The rules were recently updated by the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/481, which introduces new provisions effective as of March 2026.
Manufacturers must demonstrate how their automated driving systems perform across their intended operating conditions, including foreseeable critical situations, and provide solid evidence to support the safety of their systems.
Euro NCAP is not a regulatory entity, but its protocols strongly shape public expectations for vehicle and ADAS performance. The 2026 Euro NCAP protocol reflects the growing importance of real-world and virtual evidence. For example, speed assistance systems undergo extensive road testing against ground truth from an independent multimodal sensing system, while the framework also includes virtual-testing methods. This points to two parallel trends: greater reliance on independent real-world reference data and wider use of validated simulation in external vehicle assessments.
Despite their differences, these frameworks take a broadly similar approach and pose comparable validation challenges. Following the prescribed development process is no longer sufficient. Developers must show how the system performs under defined conditions and whether it meets the applicable expectations. This requires measuring reaction times, trajectories, distances, acceleration, lane position, and interactions with surrounding traffic, then tracing each result to its test conditions. For automated driving systems, relevant scenarios may also need to be reproduced, varied, and assessed in simulation.
AIMotive addresses these challenges through three connected capabilities:
The ‘Rooftop Box’ is an independent multimodal measurement platform that records the vehicle’s surroundings and behaviour, providing a reliable reference separate from the system under test.
‘aiData’ transforms recorded sensor data into structured, annotated data. Its metrics then convert these observations into quantitative evidence that supports analysis, reporting, and comparison across test runs or software versions.
‘aiSim’extends the workflow into simulation, enabling repeatable scenario-based testing, systematic variation of conditions, sensor simulation, and scalable exploration of situations that may be too rare, unsafe, or impractical to cover exclusively on public roads.
Neural rendering helps connect real and simulated environments by combining realistic visuals with the control offered by simulation. As virtual testing becomes more central to validation, its results must be credible, traceable, and repeatable.
Real-world testing and simulation deliver the greatest value when combined as complementary parts of one integrated validation framework. Rather than building separate workflows for each regulation, OEMs can use one connected infrastructure across ADAS and ADS frameworks. This allows them to capture independent real-world data, quantify performance, recreate scenarios in simulation, extend test coverage, and support safety and approval decisions with robust evidence.
The next parts of this series will trace this process step by step: independent real-world measurement and annotation, quantitative analysis and reporting, scenario-based virtual testing, sensor validation, and neural rendering with aiSim.
Emerson’s Connected Test Operations for Productivity, Quality
Emerson recently announced enhancements to their NI SystemLink software that enrich connected test operations with resource scheduling and NI Nigel AI capabilities. These new features help engineering teams spend less time searching for information and more time validating products, troubleshooting issues, and increasing test throughput. Customer case studies showed a 95-per-cent decrease in weekly hours spent reporting and analysis with NI SystemLink. These updates were presented at the inaugural NI Days Japan conference.
“Engineering organizations need to deliver increasingly complex products without slowing down development cycles,” said Siddarth Sethi, vice president of test and analytics software in Emerson’s Test and Measurement business. “NI SystemLink is evolving to become the operational backbone of modern test teams, connecting data to the systems, equipment, schedules, and software versions that drive each result. This allows engineers to understand not only what happened, but why. This allows for faster decision-making and makes test operations more efficient.”
Engineering organizations rely on testing to validate the performance, quality, and reliability of products throughout their lifecycle. As products become more complex, requirements increase, and development times shrink, engineering teams often struggle to connect test results to the operational context needed to understand failures, identify changes, and make informed decisions.
Test data alone rarely provides enough information to understand the origin of a failure. Engineers often need to correlate results with equipment status, software releases, test schedules, configurations, and workflow history stored in multiple systems. NI SystemLink helps integrate operational context with test results by bringing together data, equipment, software, and workflows in a single environment. This allows engineers to identify root causes faster and make more informed decisions. This reduces the time spent searching for information and has allowed some organizations to perform up to twice as many tests per day.
New features in NI SystemLink include:
- A new SystemLink experience – with simplified software offerings, streamlined licensing, modernized workflows, and better deployment options to help organizations get started faster.
- Connected test planning and resource scheduling – to help teams coordinate equipment, resources, and test activities across the lab, improve utilization, and reduce bottlenecks.
- Out-of-the-box operational visibility – with pre-configured dashboards and workflows that accelerate deployment while maintaining the flexibility to scale as needed.
- AI-powered engineering insights – integrating NI Nigel AI with NI SystemLink’s test and operational context to help engineers identify problems, highlight trends, and make more informed decisions.
Since its launch in 2018, NI SystemLink has evolved from a systems management solution to a connected test operations platform. The new release introduces new software offerings that make it easier for organizations of all sizes to adopt connected test operations with an enhanced out-of-the-box experience, streamlined deployment, and simplified licensing. At the same time, SystemLink continues to deliver the flexibility, scalability, and scalability required by organizations with highly customized workflows and enterprise-wide testing operations.
