Design of a prototypical platform for autonomous and connected vehicles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a prototype platform for autonomous and connected vehicles, detailing its architecture, algorithms, and experimental validation in urban environments to support research and development.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive prototype platform integrating mechanical, sensor, and software components for autonomous driving research, including validation through urban testing.

Findings

Successful validation of the platform in urban-like environments

Effective implementation of key autonomous driving algorithms

Demonstrated system performance in real-world scenarios

Abstract

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.