Self-driving cars are the new black. Every OEM and major tech company is taking on the autonomous challenge, and the competition is fierce. 

As an OEM or Tier 1 supplier, the landscape is rife with offerings, software tools that are aimed at assisting all areas of autonomous vehicle development and validation, many of them pioneering grabs at what is promising to be the Wild West of automotive engineering in the coming years.  And yes, some of these tools are either direct or indirect products of the gaming industry. 

If anyone asked the question, “Would you trust your autonomous vehicle validation to a game?” most of us would cringe a little.  But such questions are actually not too far off the mark these days. 

The concept of Marginal Gains is not new, nor is it particularly revolutionary. In fact, at first glance, it is so self-evident and logical, that it hardly seems worthy of special nomenclature at all.

The crux of the idea is that if you break down every aspect of what you are trying to achieve into key areas and improve each area by just a little, say 1%, then the combined improvement  – and the total achievement – can be significant.

In Pursuit of Speed

The concept is a variant of the ancient Chinese proverb attributed to Lao Tzu: “A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.” In more recent times, the concept’s application was popularised in competitive sports by Sir Dave Brailsford, the man charged with transforming British Cycling race participants into race winners. And, of course, Marginal Gains is a motorsports maxim, even when it is not called out by name.