Design of a prototypical platform for autonomous and connected vehicles
This work addresses the problem of real-world testing for autonomous vehicles, but it is incremental as it focuses on a specific prototype platform.
The paper tackled the need for real-world validation of autonomous driving solutions by presenting a prototype platform for connected and autonomous vehicles, reporting experimental tests in an urban-like environment to validate system performance.
Self-driving technology is expected to revolutionize different sectors and is seen as the natural evolution of road vehicles. In the last years, real-world validation of designed and virtually tested solutions is growing in importance since simulated environments will never fully replicate all the aspects that can affect results in the real world. To this end, this paper presents our prototype platform for experimental research on connected and autonomous driving projects. In detail, the paper presents the overall architecture of the vehicle focusing both on mechanical aspects related to remote actuation and sensors set-up and software aspects by means of a comprehensive description of the main algorithms required for autonomous driving as ego-localization, environment perception, motion planning, and actuation. Finally, experimental tests conducted in an urban-like environment are reported to validate and assess the performances of the overall system.