Autonomous vehicle simulation specialist expands into Japan

Simulation software specialist rFpro has expanded its operations into Japan with the establishment of a facility in Yokohama. A new, dedicated, engineering team will provide local, native-speaking, technical support for the company’s customers and partners in Japan and the APAC region.

The Yokohama facility will form part of rFpro’s international sales, engineering and support team. It will be supported by the company’s technical centre in the USA and the headquarters in the UK.

“Simulation is revolutionising the automotive industry and the technology providers in Japan are at the forefront of this,” said Peter Daley, Managing Director at rFpro. “With simulation forming a critical part of vehicle testing and validation, we want to have a team on the ground ready to support our customers and technical partners in the region. Our Japanese base gives rFpro a truly global reach with facilities now in Asia, North America and Europe.”

rFpro has experienced significant growth in Asia, with revenues up by more than 100% in the region over the last 4 years. This has largely been driven by the accelerated use of simulation in automotive applications, including ADAS and autonomous vehicle technologies.

Tatsuji Moriwaki has more than 10 years’ experience in the automotive industry and will be rFpro’s business development lead in Japan. “rFpro is the world’s leading simulation software provider so it is an honour to be joining the company,” said Moriwaki, Technical Sales Manager, rFpro. “We are at the leading edge of vehicle development, particularly for autonomous technologies. This has led to extraordinary growth in the region and we are aiming to continue this going forward.”

rFpro provides a highly accurate, engineering-grade simulation environment for the automotive and motorsport industries. It is used for the development and testing of vehicle dynamics, ADAS and autonomous vehicles. rFpro is agnostic and compatible with the leading vehicle model, traffic solution, real-time hardware and motion platform providers.

The company has the world’s largest library of high-fidelity digital twins including race circuits, proving grounds, city centres and public roads. Included, is a digital twin of Tokyo’s famous Shuto Expressway, Inner Circular route. The 35km section of road has been modelled using survey-grade LiDAR scan data to create a vehicle dynamics grade road surface, which is accurate to within 1mm in the vertical direction. This is key to accurately simulate the effects of every bump, drain cover and expansion joint around the full route.

rFpro expands into Tokyo – image shows the company’s digital twin of the city’s Shuto Expressway

“Simulation is revolutionising the automotive industry and the technology providers in Japan are at the forefront of this,” said Peter Daley, Managing Director at rFpro

About rFpro

rFpro software provides a simulation environment for the automotive and motorsport industries. It is used for the development and testing of autonomous vehicles, ADAS, vehicle dynamics and human factor studies – essentially anything that involves driving a vehicle. rFpro’s automotive customers are the world’s largest car manufacturers, tier-one suppliers and sensor developers. We enable them to simulate, test and validate new sensors, control systems and vehicle hardware systems. The top ten OEMs that were early adopters of rFpro technology have already launched road cars which started their development, not on a test track, but in a virtual environment using rFpro. In motorsport we are the market leader of professional driver-in-the-loop simulator software – our customers are champions of every leading motorsport category. We maintain the largest library of digital road models (digital twins) including test tracks and race circuits for F1, NASCAR, WEC, IMSA, Indy, Formula E, Super-GT and Australian V8 Supercars. rFpro’s vision is for every driving simulator experiment to be conducted using the rFpro engineering-focused simulation engine. On every driving simulator, local or cloud-based, rFpro will form a fundamental part of vehicle developments.