An Open-Source Scenario Architect for Autonomous Vehicles

TL;DR

This paper presents an open-source scenario architect tool for autonomous vehicles, enabling simulation-based testing of safety-critical scenarios in racing environments to improve validation processes.

Contribution

It introduces a graphical user interface for generating multi-vehicle scenarios, including race environments, for autonomous vehicle safety validation.

Findings

Demonstrated use of scenarios for safety assessment validation

Developed three safety-critical scenario examples

Showcased the tool's potential for autonomous vehicle testing

Abstract

The development of software components for autonomous driving functions should always include an extensive and rigorous evaluation. Since real-world testing is expensive and safety-critical -- especially when facing dynamic racing scenarios at the limit of handling -- a favored approach is simulation-based testing. In this work, we propose an open-source graphical user interface, which allows the generation of a multi-vehicle scenario in a regular or even a race environment. The underlying method and implementation is elaborated in detail. Furthermore, we showcase the potential use-cases for the scenario-based validation of a safety assessment module, integrated into an autonomous driving software stack. Within this scope, we introduce three illustrative scenarios, each focusing on a different safety-critical aspect.