High fidelity simulator enables real time testing of racing cars
High-Fidelity Multi-Body Simulator for Autonomous Racing
Robotics
Summary
Simulating race cars realistically helps developers test self-driving software without risking real vehicles. The authors built a detailed digital model of an autonomous racecar and its environment, including roads with curves and hills. They connected this model to the software the car runs on, so it behaves like a real car during testing. The simulation runs fast enough for real-time use on a laptop, providing reliable data for developers to check algorithms before trying them on actual racecars.
What this means in practice
- •For autonomous vehicle engineers: Test autonomous racing algorithms using a detailed real-time vehicle simulator before deploying on physical cars.
- •For simulator developers: Incorporate multi-body vehicle models and realistic 3D track data into simulation platforms to enhance autonomous system validation.
Authors
Nicola Musiu, Francesco Iacovacci, Fausto Lupo, Matteo Pini, Giovanni Scapicchi, Francesco Moretti, Eugenio Mascaro, Pietro Musso, Ayoub Raji, Marko Bertogna, Vincenzo Maria Arricale, Angelo Lo Sapio, Alessandro Piccarelli, Garron Fish
Abstract
We present a custom high-fidelity vehicle dynamics simulation environment for testing and validation of Autonomous Racing software. The digital twin of the autonomous vehicle is developed in Dymola, using racecar dynamics modeling libraries to build a complete multi-body model. A 3D road surface, including elevation profiles and curbs, is implemented using the Curved Regular Grid (CRG) standard. The model is exported from Dymola as a Functional Mock-up Unit (FMU) and integrated into a custom software-in-the-loop simulator, where communication interfaces with the autonomous racing stack were developed in C++. A calibration procedure based on experimental data is also presented, along with a validation study to further support the quality of the proposed framework. The simulator runs in real time on a portable computer and provides reliable ground truth for algorithms validation prior to real-world deployment.