Extensive Tests of Autonomous Driving Technologies

This paper presents the vision of the Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (VisLab) on future automated vehicles, ranging from sensor selection up to their extensive testing. VisLab´s design choices are explained using the BRAiVE autonomous vehicle prototype as an example. BRAiVE, which is specifically designed to develop, test, and demonstrate advanced safety applications with different automation levels, features a high integration level and a low-cost sensor suite, which are mainly based on vision, as opposed to many other autonomous vehicle implementations based on expensive and invasive sensors. The importance of performing extensive tests to validate the design choices is considered to be a hard requirement, and different tests have been organized, including an intercontinental trip from Italy to China. This paper also presents the test, the main challenges, and the vehicles that have been specifically developed for this test, which was performed by four autonomous vehicles based on BRAiVE´s architecture. This paper also includes final remarks on VisLab´s perspective on future vehicles´ sensor suite.