CarlaNCAP: A Framework for Quantifying the Safety of Vulnerable Road Users in Infrastructure-Assisted Collective Perception Using EuroNCAP Scenarios

TL;DR

This paper introduces CarlaNCAP, a framework and dataset for evaluating how infrastructure-assisted collective perception can improve VRU safety in autonomous driving, demonstrating significant accident reduction in simulations.

Contribution

It presents a novel dataset and evaluation framework for assessing infrastructure-based collective perception's impact on VRU safety in EuroNCAP scenarios.

Findings

Infrastructure-assisted CP can reduce accidents by up to 100%.

Simulation results show significant safety improvements over vehicle-only sensors.

The dataset includes 11,000 frames of safety-critical scenarios.

Abstract

The growing number of road users has significantly increased the risk of accidents in recent years. Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) are particularly at risk, especially in urban environments where they are often occluded by parked vehicles or buildings. Autonomous Driving (AD) and Collective Perception (CP) are promising solutions to mitigate these risks. In particular, infrastructure-assisted CP, where sensor units are mounted on infrastructure elements such as traffic lights or lamp posts, can help overcome perceptual limitations by providing enhanced points of view, which significantly reduces occlusions. To encourage decision makers to adopt this technology, comprehensive studies and datasets demonstrating safety improvements for VRUs are essential. In this paper, we propose a framework for evaluating the safety improvement by infrastructure-based CP specifically targeted at VRUs including a dataset with safety-critical EuroNCAP scenarios (CarlaNCAP) with 11k frames. Using this dataset, we conduct an in-depth simulation study and demonstrate that infrastructure-assisted CP can significantly reduce accident rates in safety-critical scenarios, achieving up to 100% accident avoidance compared to a vehicle equipped with sensors with only 33%. Code is available at https://github.com/ekut-es/carla_ncap