Vehicular Coordination via a Safety Kernel in the Gulliver Test-Bed

Cooperative vehicular systems base their coordination on inherently uncertain inter-vehicle communications. Safe solutions that do not properly manage uncertainty, lead to inefficient outcomes. We consider that cooperative functions can be executed with several service levels, and we use the system architectural concept of safety kernel for managing the service level that achieves the best possible performance while keeping the system safe. We use the Gulliver test-bed for demonstrating the safety kernel concept by means of a pilot system implementation on scaled vehicles with sensors and communication capabilities. The demonstrated architecture incorporates: (1) a local dynamic map (LDM) that uses local and remote sensory information for calculating the location of nearby objects, (2) a safety kernel to manage the service levels, (3) a cooperative level of service evaluator that allows vehicles to reach agreement on a common service level and, finally, (4) a driver manager that executes in accordance to the cooperative level of service when determining how to calculate the trajectory. This paper explains how the different components considered in the architectural concept operate, and shows how it is possible to use (similar to existing) trajectory planning algorithms when implementing the concept.