Prof. Dr. Dirk Adamski, Professor für Simulation und Versuch im Fahrwerk an der HAW Foto: HAW
For the current eMove360° magazine in german language (free download PDF) Sabine Metzger entertained with the winner of the eMove360° Award 2021 in the Automated Driving Concepts category. The winner was the Hamburg Concept Car 21 (HCC21) from HAW in cooperation with KET. Jan Friedhoff, Professor of Vehicle Concepts and Design, and his colleague Prof. Dr. Dirk Adamski, who teaches chassis simulation and testing as a professor, initiated the project and is responsible for its management. Both work at the Faculty of Technology and Computer Science in the Department of Vehicle Technology and Aircraft Construction.
Congratulations once again, Prof. Dr. Adamski, on winning the eMove360° Award in the Automated Driving Concepts category. What does this award mean for you and your team?
Prof. Dr. Dirk Adamski: Thank you for the congratulations. For us, winning the award is a very good confirmation that we are on the right track with our concept and that the hard work was worth it for everyone involved.
Would you like to briefly introduce the Hamburg Concept Car (HCC21) to us?
Prof. Dr. Adamski: Our concept is intended to answer the question of how the design and layout of a vehicle changes when we combine the advantages of battery-electric drives with the requirements of automated driving. It was explicitly required that it should still be possible to drive oneself. The result is a vehicle study with the external dimensions of a compact vehicle, but with the interior of a luxury sedan.
What was the basic idea behind the design study? What was the objective behind the concept car?
Prof. Dr. Adamski: The underlying vehicle concept originally came about in a course taught by my colleague Jan Friedhoff, who delivered the first draft with his master’s students. In the course of the development period, many of the aspects of vehicle development dealt with there were examined and incorporated into the concept as part of further courses in our bachelor’s and master’s degree course in vehicle construction. We refer to our roots, the Wagenbauschule Hamburg, which turned 125 last year, and wanted to show that we not only know theoretically how to build a vehicle, but also implement it in hardware. This is how the show car came about, for which we received the eMove360° Award.
Who was involved? How long did the implementation take?
Prof. Dr. Adamski: All in all, there were well over 300 people involved in the development of our vehicle technology and aircraft construction department. But the construction of the show car was only made possible when we won over our project partner,body Development Thurner GmbH from Munich. Because it is one thing to test the concepts virtually, but it is a completely different challenge to make them understandable and tangible. Especially when you want to talk to non-professionals about automated driving, the sense of space and haptics are essential points for being able to do this in a vehicle context.
Will the show car ever become a production vehicle or is that not the intention at all?
Prof. Dr. Adamski: No, we don’t want to compete with the OEMs. The show car is the subject of our joint research on the display, operating and interior concepts and will remain unique. Even when we have completed our research work, it will still be very useful for our teaching. This is where our students can see what can be done with what they can learn from us.
They consciously encourage students to think beyond the usual solutions. What do you want to achieve with it?
Prof. Dr. Adamski: Of course, some of our graduates will continue to develop things that we already know today. But we need creative minds who can also work on completely new ideas and develop them themselves – otherwise we will no longer be competitive in Europe in the future. In my own courses on chassis technology, I always show my students solutions that are ingenious but have failed or are far removed from what we would expect to be able to do today. The proverbial bigger picture should not be the limiting factor in the minds of our future vehicle developers.
Is there already a new project in terms of mobility of the future?
Prof. Dr. Adamski: Wait and see and keep an eye on us…
www.haw-hamburg.de
Information on the eMove360° Award 2022
