Secondmind wins Alternative Powertrain Test Innovation of the Year 2024
Secondmind has won an international award for helping automotive engineers efficiently address complex e-powertrain calibration challenges.
It won the Alternative Powertrain Test Innovation of the Year at this year’s Automotive Testing Technology International (ATTI) Awards, in Stuttgart, Germany.
The Secondmind for Calibration application for e-powertrain was recognised for significantly improving testing efficiency, reducing test bench occupancy and slashing data requirements for customers.
Mohammad Behroozi, a senior vehicle dynamicist at General Motors, and one of the judges, said: "The intelligent automation aspect is a potential game-changer. By drastically reducing manual work and idle time, this efficiency boost could significantly enhance calibration, which is essential for optimizing e-powertrain performance and extending range."
The awards, now in their 17th year, celebrate leading vehicle engineering suppliers and specialists working on software, crash testing, AI and electrified technologies for all areas of automotive testing. The winners were revealed at the Automotive Testing Expo Europe 2024.
The Alternative Powertrain Test Innovation Award was introduced this year in response to the industry’s focus on new-energy vehicle powertrain development and software technologies that can augment hardware analysis systems or, in some cases, entirely eliminate the need for physical testing.
Secondmind’s solution addresses challenges such as thermal management by merging physics-informed models with advanced machine learning to offer highly-precise predictions. Its e-powertrain application empowers the engineer by enabling them to integrate their deep domain knowledge with its state-of-the-art AI, creating models that not only understand the interplay of factors affecting e-motor performance, but that quickly adapt to the 'personality' of each individual motor.
By automating the most labour-intensive calibration work, Secondmind for Calibration slashes data needs and test bed occupancy by 80 per cent, cuts calibration time in half and reduces the need for costly prototypes by 40 per cent.
A panel of 11 international judges, including OEM engineers, consultants and technical writers from the automotive development and testing industry, acknowledged Secondmind’s innovation, which shows how advanced AI can unlock efficiencies for alternative powertrain testing and beyond.
One judge, Gemma Hatton, freelance technical writer and former F1 tire engineer, called it “an innovative example of how AI can be utilised to make testing more efficient”, adding: “Saving time, testbed occupancy and data has many secondary benefits too, further minimising the resource and environmental impact of testing without sacrificing accuracy."
Fellow judge Jahee Campbell-Brennan, director of Wavey Dynamics, said: "Secondmind addresses one of the key issues for EV powertrain development in advancing the efficiency of the calibration process. Ultimately this will lead to better, more efficient and higher torque products, which will benefit consumers in performance and range."
Secondmind CEO Gary Brotman said: “It is an honour and a privilege to be nominated alongside exceptional companies pushing technology boundaries in vehicle design and development. This award validates the hard work, dedication and creative ingenuity of the Secondmind team, who are all motivated by an insatiable desire to build practical, AI-fueled software that empowers engineers to break through complexity barriers and design better, cleaner software-defined vehicles, faster.”
Secondmind was Highly Commended in the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards last month in the AI Company of the Year category.