The future of driving, simulated: step inside ROADS

Stepping into the future

Digital simulation has been part of my daily work for years, but each time I enter the dome of our ROADS driving simulator, I’m reminded why we built it. From the outside, it looks like an enormous sphere on rails, close to 90 tons of engineering. Inside, it’s another world: a full car cabin surrounded by high-definition projections, a place where the virtual twin and human perception come together.

In the Cloud, AI runs millions of calculations in real-time, creating scenarios that allow us to test vehicles long before they exist on the road. But the real difference is made by the people, here, inside that cabin. An engineer, a designer, a test driver: they observe, they feel, they judge. Data alone cannot tell us what makes a car safe, intuitive, or inspiring. Human insight gives meaning to every simulation.

That is the essence of ROADS: a time machine powered by AI, guided by people, and already driving us into the future.

A different kind of playground

Let me be clear: this is not your teenage racing game setup with a joystick and a screen. ROADS is an engineering masterpiece. Its hexapod system, six giant white actuators, tilts, shakes, and lifts the car in every direction, reproducing real driving sensations. The dome itself, seven meters in diameter, wraps drivers in a 360° projection that tricks the brain into believing it’s out on the open road.

Check this out - quite a feat of engineering, right?

And the numbers are mind-bending: accelerations up to 1G, movements on 25m x 25m rails, response times under 30 milliseconds. That means when you slam the brakes in here, you feel your own weight double instantly. Trust me, your body doesn’t need convincing: it believes every millisecond of it.

Why it matters

But beyond the “wow” factor, why does this matter?

Because designing cars has always been a race against time, cost, and complexity. Traditionally, we would craft prototype after prototype, test after test, iterating in a trial-and-error mode. It was expensive, slow, and often wasteful. With ROADS, we can run hundreds of dangerous, improbable, or everyday scenarios, without ever putting a car on asphalt.

Imagine an engineer in Guyancourt, France (78), designing a new driver-assistance system. Instead of waiting months for a prototype, they can load it into ROADS and instantly simulate a rainy night on the périphérique, or a sudden pedestrian crossing in São Paulo. Every twist of the wheel and every reaction is captured, refined, validated.

The result? Safer cars, developed faster, with less environmental impact. It’s not just innovation for its own sake: it’s innovation with purpose.

The human in the loop

One of the most remarkable aspects of ROADS is that it doesn’t leave humans behind in the age of digital twins. In fact, it puts us at the center.

When I drive in the simulator, I’m not testing lines of code but actually driving the digital twin of the car being designed, which runs in a virtual world (roads, traffic, weather, etc.) generated by SCANeR*, our simulation software. I’m testing how flesh-and-blood humans like you and me will feel, react, and adapt inside tomorrow’s vehicles. The car of the future is not just a machine, it’s a partner in motion, an assistant, a co-pilot. ROADS allows us to ensure that this partnership feels natural, intuitive, and above all, safe.

A collective vision

ROADS is not alone in this journey. At the Immersive Simulation Center in our Technocentre, it works alongside HELIOS, our lighting simulator, and the XR Innov Lab, where digital and physical models meet in what we call “phygital” experiences. Together, these tools form the beating heart of Renault’s digital transformation.

Seventy engineers, experts in fields from AI to vehicle dynamics, collaborate under one roof. Some days, the lab feels like a bustling control center for the future of mobility. Other days, it feels more like a playground for visionaries.

Driving ahead

Over the years, I’ve seen many tools and technologies transform the way we design cars. But none of them captures the future as vividly as ROADS. At Renault, we have the privilege not only to imagine what’s coming next, but to put ourselves in the driver’s seat of tomorrow.

Every time we step into ROADS, we are rehearsing for roads not yet traveled. And while the technology is extraordinary, what makes me proudest is its purpose: to make mobility safer, smarter, and more human.

The next time you sit in a Renault and feel that subtle ease when the car helps you brake, steer, or simply makes your journey more comfortable, know this: somewhere, sometime, we already lived that moment - inside a giant black dome in Guyancourt.

And we can’t wait to show you what comes next.

* SCANeR is an AV Simulation software. AV simulation has developed ROADS with and for Renault Group. AV Simulation is a joint venture between four stakeholders : Renault Group, Dassault Systèmes , UTAC and SOGECLAIR .

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