On 1 October, the gates of the long-awaited World Expo in Dubai open – and an innovation from Austria will attract special attention: the SPIDER developed by VIRTUAL VEHICLE. A model of the mobile test robot will present top Austrian research at the WorldExpo on the Persian Gulf. The miniature can be seen in the Austrian pavilion, which will present sustainable innovations from Austria in its iLab on an area of 2,400 m². In keeping with the Expo motto “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future”, innovations “Made in Austria” are to contribute to making the world a good deal more sustainable, safer and better. As an integral part of the exhibition, the iLab in the pavilion is dedicated to this innovative strength of Austria, for which the SPIDER in particular stands: it was also awarded the “Zukunftsweisende Innovation” award by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce.

Link: WKO

SPIDER wins highly endowed Houska Prize

The latest success for the VIRTUAL VEHICLE development team is very recent: The SPIDER won second place in the category “Research & Development in SMEs” at the highly endowed Houska Prize 2021! The autonomous driving test platform thus prevailed in a field with a total of 61 top-class entries. The winning projects in Austria’s largest private prize for applied research were selected in a two-stage process. Accordingly, team leader Christian Schwarzl was delighted: “We are pleased that our research work on the development of test systems for autonomous driving and driver assistance systems has been honoured by the jury. The Houska Prize enjoys an international reputation that extends far beyond Austria’s borders. This award strengthens our contribution to making automated mobility a reality more quickly”.