Safety Assessment and Simulation of Autonomous Vehicle in Urban Environments

Abstract

The Autonomous Vehicle (AV) industry aims to design strategic plans to ensure the safety of the developed systems before their mass deployment. Real-road testing is shown to be impractical for validating these systems as it requires many years if not decades of testing in different environmental conditions. Therefore, this method must be complemented with simulation for a feasible solution. The primary goal of this research is to develop advanced techniques in the safety validation area by using immersive simulation technologies. This study led to a simulation approach for safety evaluation of an AV shuttle, iseAuto, currently operating at the TalTech campus. First, we create a virtual environment based on the specified path on the university campus including all relevant features. The environment is created by using geospatial data which is collected by a drone, then they are converted to a 3D map applicable for the LGSVL simulator. Next, the developed shuttle 3D model is imported to the simulation environment and with the aim of the LGSVL, sensor data are provided for the Autoware perception algorithms, which is the control software of the shuttle. This system enables us to evaluate AV’s decision-making performance and safety in different situations.