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CopaDrive: an integrated ROS cooperative driving test and validation framework
Ref: CISTER-TR-201104       Publication Date: 2021

Abstract:
The development of critical cooperative autonomous vehicle systems is increasingly complex due to the inherent multidimensional problem that encompasses control, communications, and safety. These Cooperating Cyber-Physical Systems (Co-CPS) impose an unprecedented integration between communication, sensing, and actuation actions, alongside the impact of the particular characteristics of the vehicle dynamics and the environment. This significantly increases the complexity of these systems, which, due to their critical safety requirements, must undergo extensive testing and validation to delimit the optimal safety bounds. In this chapter, we present CopaDrive, a cooperative driving framework that uses ROS as an enabler and integrator, to support the development and test of cooperative driving systems in a continuous fashion. CopaDrive integrates a physical simulator (Gazebo) with a traffic generator (Sumo) and a network simulator (OmNet++) to analyze a cooperative driving system. An On-board Unit (OBU) can also replace the network simulator, to create a Hardware in the Loop (HIL) simulation and test the communications' platforms and safety systems in a simulated scenario. Finally, the developed systems are integrated in the on-board computing platforms that will be deployed at the final prototype vehicles, and validated and demonstrated over a robotic testbed. CopaDrive enabled us to reuse software components and evaluate the cooperative driving system in each step of the development process. In this chapter, the framework's performance and its potential is demonstrated for each configuration, in line with the development of a cooperative driving system.

Enio Filho

,

Ricardo Severino

,

João Rodrigues

,

Bruno Gonçalves

,

Anis Koubâa

,

Eduardo Tovar