Train here, drive there: ROS based end-to-end autonomous-driving pipeline validation in CARLA simulator using the NHTSA typology

Abstract

Urban complex scenarios are the most challenging situations in the field of Autonomous Driving (AD). In that sense, an AD pipeline should be tested in countless environments and scenarios, escalating the cost and development time exponentially with a physical approach. In this paper we present a validation of our fully-autonomous driving architecture using the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) protocol in the CARLA simulator, focusing on the analysis of our decision-making module, based on Hierarchical Interpreted Binary Petri Nets (HIBPN). First, the paper states the importance of using hyper-realistic simulators, as a preliminary help to real test, as well as an appropriate design of the traffic scenarios as the two current keys to build safe and robust AD technology. Second, our pipeline is introduced, which exploits the concepts of standard communication in robotics using the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the Docker approach to provide the system with isolation, flexibility and portability, describing the main modules and approaches to perform the navigation. Third, the CARLA simulator is described, outlining the steps carried out to merge our architecture with the simulator and the advantages to create ad-hoc driving scenarios for use cases validation instead of just modular evaluation. Finally, the architecture is validated using some challenging driving scenarios such as Pedestrian Crossing, Stop, Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Unexpected Pedestrian. Some qualitative (video files: Simulation Use Cases) and quantitative (linear velocity and trajectory splitted in the corresponding HIBPN states) results are presented for each use case, as well as an analysis of the temporal graphs associated to the Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) cases, validating our architecture in simulation as a preliminary stage before implementing it in our real autonomous electric car.