From a Competition for Self-Driving Miniature Cars to a Standardized Experimental Platform: Concept, Models, Architecture, and Evaluation

摘要

Context: Competitions for self-driving cars facilitated the development andresearch in the domain of autonomous vehicles towards potential solutions forthe future mobility. Objective: Miniature vehicles can bridge the gap between simulation-basedevaluations of algorithms relying on simplified models, and thosetime-consuming vehicle tests on real-scale proving grounds. Method: This article combines findings from a systematic literature review,an in-depth analysis of results and technical concepts from contestants in acompetition for self-driving miniature cars, and experiences of participatingin the 2013 competition for self-driving cars. Results: A simulation-based development platform for real-scale vehicles hasbeen adapted to support the development of a self-driving miniature car.Furthermore, a standardized platform was designed and realized to enableresearch and experiments in the context of future mobility solutions. Conclusion: A clear separation between algorithm conceptualization andvalidation in a model-based simulation environment enabled efficient andriskless experiments and validation. The design of a reusable, low-cost, andenergy-efficient hardware architecture utilizing a standardizedsoftware/hardware interface enables experiments, which would otherwise requireresources like a large real-scale test track.