Engineering Autonomous Driving Software
This addresses the need for adaptable engineering processes in large, heterogeneous teams working on innovative autonomous vehicle projects, though it appears incremental in applying existing agile and simulation methods.
The paper tackles the challenge of developing autonomous driving software for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge by proposing an engineering process that integrates agile concepts and a 'simulate first' approach for efficient testing in complex urban scenarios.
A larger number of people with heterogeneous knowledge and skills running a project together needs an adaptable, target, and skill-specific engineering process. This especially holds for a project to develop a highly innovative, autonomously driving vehicle to participate in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. In this contribution, we present essential elements of a software and systems engineering process to develop a so-called artificial intelligence capable of driving autonomously in complex urban situations. The process itself includes agile concepts, like a test first approach, continuous integration of all software modules, and a reliable release and configuration management assisted by software tools in integrated development environments. However, one of the most important elements for an efficient and stringent development is the ability to efficiently test the behavior of the developed system in a flexible and modular system simulation for urban situations both interactively and unattendedly. We call this the simulate first approach.