The SET Level project ran from 1 March 2019 to 31 October 2022 and was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection under grant number 19A19004L. Its aim was to advance the use of simulation for the development and testing of highly automated driving functions in urban environments. IPG Automotive, the project’s solution provider, delivered the CarMaker simulation platform and led the design of a modular, open simulation architecture that supports the verification of autonomous vehicles and their subsystems.

Central to the project were the Simulation Use Cases (SUCs), which served as concrete success criteria and enabled systematic evaluation of the chosen approaches. IPG Automotive implemented demonstrators for SUC 2 (sub‑system validation) and SUC 3 (component simulation) on the CarMaker platform. These demonstrators leveraged industry‑standard formats and interfaces such as OpenSCENARIO, OpenDRIVE, and the Open Simulation Interface, ensuring interoperability across the automotive ecosystem. The demonstrators were built around realistic sensor models for radar, lidar, and camera, each integrated into CarMaker’s scenario editor. For example, the radar user story in SUC 3 was realized by implementing the SensorView for radar and connecting it to the project’s radar model, while the lidar user story involved defining irregular beam patterns and generating synthetic lidar data through ray‑tracing. The camera user story provided depth and RGB image streams, demonstrating the platform’s capability to handle multi‑modal sensor data.

The project also introduced the Credible Simulation Process framework, which guided the systematic collection, documentation, and provision of all simulation‑environment data required by the sensor‑model developers. This framework ensured that the simulation results could be traced back to the underlying models and assumptions, thereby enhancing the reliability of the virtual testing process. Throughout the project, IPG Automotive supplied a fully functional CarMaker environment to partner developers from the automotive industry, suppliers, IT vendors, and research institutions, allowing them to test and refine their sensor models from the first milestone.

In addition to the technical deliverables, SET Level produced a comprehensive simulation architecture that decomposes whole‑vehicle models into modular sub‑models, facilitating parallel development and integration. The architecture supports the exchange of simulation data through standardized interfaces, enabling collaboration across OEMs, suppliers, technology developers, and academia. The project’s success was quantitatively documented in the success‑control report, which provides detailed performance metrics and evidence of the demonstrators’ effectiveness.

Collaboration was a cornerstone of the initiative. IPG Automotive coordinated with a consortium that included major German automotive manufacturers, component suppliers, IT vendors, and leading research institutes. Each partner contributed expertise in specific domains: OEMs supplied vehicle dynamics and safety requirements, suppliers provided sensor hardware models, IT vendors delivered integration tools, and research institutions contributed advanced simulation algorithms. IPG Automotive’s role encompassed platform development, interface definition, demonstrator implementation, and support for partner testing activities. The consortium’s joint efforts resulted in significant progress in standardizing test‑description formats, simulation interfaces, and data exchange protocols, thereby laying the groundwork for future industrial adoption of virtual testing for autonomous driving.

Overall, SET Level achieved its goal of establishing a robust, modular simulation framework that integrates industry standards and supports the verification of highly automated driving functions. The demonstrators and architecture developed during the project provide a reusable foundation for future virtual testing initiatives, while the collaborative model demonstrated how OEMs, suppliers, vendors, and academia can jointly advance the state of the art in automotive simulation.