OpenCAMS: An Open-Source Connected and Automated Mobility Co-Simulation Platform for Advancing Next-Generation Intelligent Transportation Systems Research

TL;DR

OpenCAMS is an open-source, synchronized co-simulation platform integrating SUMO, CARLA, and OMNeT++ to advance research in intelligent transportation systems across safety, mobility, and cybersecurity domains.

Contribution

It introduces a modular, extensible, and time-synchronized co-simulation framework combining traffic, perception, and communication simulators for transportation research.

Findings

Seamless integration of three simulation tools for comprehensive transportation modeling

Supports detailed sensor and vehicle control simulation with high fidelity

Enables research in connected and automated mobility applications

Abstract

We introduce OpenCAMS (Open-Source Connected and Automated Mobility Co-Simulation Platform), an open-source, synchronized, and extensible co-simulation framework that tightly couples three best-in-class simulation tools: (i) SUMO, (ii) CARLA, and (iii) OMNeT++. OpenCAMS is designed to support advanced research in transportation safety, mobility, and cybersecurity by combining the strengths of each simulation domain. Specifically, SUMO provides large-scale, microscopic traffic modeling; CARLA offers high-fidelity 3D perception, vehicle dynamics, and control simulation; and OMNeT++ enables modular, event-driven network communication, such as cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X). OpenCAMS employs a time-synchronized, bidirectional coupling architecture that ensures coherent simulation progression across traffic, perception, and communication domains while preserving modularity and reproducibility. For example, CARLA can simulate and render a subset of vehicles that require detailed sensor emulation and control logic; SUMO orchestrates network-wide traffic flow, vehicle routing, and traffic signal management; and OMNeT++ dynamically maps communication nodes to both mobile entities (e.g., vehicles) and static entities (e.g., roadside units) to enable C-V2X communication. While these three simulators form the foundational core of OpenCAMS, the platform is designed to be expandable and future-proof, allowing additional simulators to be integrated on top of this core without requiring fundamental changes to the system architecture. The OpenCAMS platform is fully open-source and publicly available through its GitHub repository https://github.com/minhaj6/carla-sumo-omnetpp-cosim, providing the research community with an accessible, flexible, and collaborative environment for advancing next-generation intelligent transportation systems.