Each summer term, ASM students have the great opportunity to take part in professional vehicle dynamics testing on the former US Air Force Airfield Leipheim - a place which automotive companies like Daimler and Porsche are using to test their brand-new prototypes.

The test cars of our university – a Toyota Prius third generation and a Daimler B class – are equipped with state-of-the-art sensor and measurement technology. The cars are tested for their stability and reaction e.g. to the "Elk Test", which shows how a car is handled in tight curves. 

The movement of the cars during the test maneuvers is measured by a modern Differential GPS (DGPS).  By referring the actual car position to the location of a fixed station, DGPS technology is precise down to several centimeters. Additional sensors are acceleration, steering wheel angle and so on. Even more information for the measurement computer comes via communication with the car's internal CAN bus. For later Analysis, a camera records the driver’s vision during the test. The video material can then be reviewed using a video stream.

Witnessing this kind of professional handling testing, and even more performing the driving tests themselves is always a great experience for our students after all the theoretical lectures and computer simulations about vehicle dynamics they’ve had before. The external lab experiments on the Leipheim Airfield are a very important contribution to our philosophy to combine theory and practice in our Master of Engineering education.