Christmas Eve is always a special, if exhausting, day each\nyear for Santa Claus. Delivering gifts to children around the world in less\nthan 24 hours is a lot of work. So this year, Santa had an idea to make his\nholiday duties less stressful for him and his reindeer: using vehicle\nelectrification and autonomous driving technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By partnering with Siemens, Santa developed an ambitious\nplan to exponentially boost the efficiency of his worldwide gift delivery\noperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s how Santa Claus and his team did it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where could Santa maximize efficiency? While Santa\u2019s\nreindeer are amazing at their jobs, he doesn\u2019t want to overwork them. So, he considered\nways to minimize the burden of flying on his reindeer. His first thought was\nthrough electrification. But, how could he build an electric sleigh with optimal\nperformance and a large enough range?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Santa gathered his best engineering elves and tasked them\nwith designing, developing and electrifying his cherry red sleigh. The elves knew\nthat every function and feature in an electric vehicle needed to be electrified\nand controlled by software<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They chose to simulate, validate and verify the capabilities\nof the sleigh, make necessary changes and then ensure all the engineering teams\nhad the latest iterations at their fingertips. Getting to full electrification takes\na lot of virtual design and analysis, but the benefits were well worth the effort.\nThey were able to develop a re-envisioned sleigh more quickly with simulation\nthen show how a variety of conditions including headwinds, cold weather,\naltitude, acceleration, weight of presents, and a dash of reindeer magic, would\nimpact battery\nperformance<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the electrification of the sleigh complete, Santa\nturned his attention to other opportunities to make his deliveries more\nefficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Santa then considered the idea of making his sleigh fully autonomous.\nThe autonomy of the sleigh allowed him to focus less on steering and more on\nhigher value tasks, such as organizing the presents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new design incorporated special light detection and ranging\n(LIDAR), radar and camera sensors. These sensors will capture sensor data as\nthe sleigh travels across the sky and landing on countless roofs around the\nworld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The data from each sensor feeds into an innovative\nautonomous driving platform based in the North Pole workshop. The result is a\nconsistent, high resolution, 360-degree view of the sleigh\u2019s surroundings. The\nsleigh\u2019s driving decision AI algorithms and steering actuators nimbly navigate\nthe vehicle as it travels autonomously across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the self-driving sleigh prototype was perfected, Santa wanted\nto ensure safety and that the sleigh would operate as designed. So, Santa\u2019s\nengineers looked at super computer-class simulation of the sleigh and environment\nso to minimize the need for extensive physical prototyping. This dramatically\nreduced the need for hundreds of millions of logged test miles necessary to\ndemonstrate the safety of the sleigh. The right simulation platform produced\nhighly realistic, physics-based simulations of an unlimited number of potential\nflying situations and other parameters. Santa can now rely on an autonomous\nflying system that can travel safely to its destination and land on a variety\nof rooftops without worrying about a single glass of spilled milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Santa could see it all coming together, but he was not quite\nsatisfied with its efficiency. It was time to design one more time-saving feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe autonomous sleigh<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The last mile of\ndelivery<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n