Cambridge AutoTech pioneer Secondmind has scooped a major award in Germany. The company won the ‘Alternative Powertrain Test Innovation of the Year’ at the Automotive Testing Technology International (ATTI) Awards.

The Secondmind for Calibration application for e-powertrain was recognised for significantly improving testing efficiency, reducing test bench occupancy and slashing data requirements for its customers.

Winners were unveiled at the Automotive Testing Expo Europe 2024 in Stuttgart. Now in their 17th year, the ATTI Awards celebrate the world’s leading vehicle engineering suppliers and specialists across software, crash testing, AI and electrified technologies who are driving the industry forward across all areas of automotive testing.

The Alternative Powertrain Test Innovation Award was a new category 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 was recognised for helping automotive engineers efficiently address complex e-powertrain calibration challenges, such as thermal management.

The company merges physics-informed models with advanced machine learning to offer highly-precise predictions. The e-powertrain application empowers the engineer by enabling them to integrate their deep domain knowledge with its state-of-the-art AI to create models that not only understand the complex interplay of factors affecting e-motor performance, but also can also quickly adapt to the ‘personality’ of each individual motor.

In automating the most labour-intensive calibration work, Secondmind for Calibration was said to slash data needs and test bed occupancy by 80 per cent, reduce calibration time by 50 per cent and the need for costly prototypes by 40 per cent.

The panel of 11 international judges, made up of OEM engineers, consultants and technical writers from the automotive development and testing industry, acknowledged Secondmind’s innovation and recognised the potential to apply advanced AI in a way that could help unlock huge efficiencies for alternative powertrain testing and beyond.

One of the judges – Mohammad Behroozi, senior vehicle dynamicist at General Motors – 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 optimising e-powertrain performance and extending range.”

Secondmind CEO Gary Brotman, added: “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-fuelled software that empowers engineers to break through complexity barriers and design better, cleaner software-defined vehicles, faster.”