Conditioned harsh outdoor environment for perception systems of autonomous applications (CAVE). (CAVE)

Autonomous mobile systems might fail for many reasons, but one of them is when the harshness of the environment increases. It is difficult for OEMs, integrators, sensor and hardware components providers to design a robust autonomous mobile system based on traditional testing methods. Especially perception systems are challenged in realistic and relevant harsh conditions (e.g. rain, fog, direct sunlight). Currently, testing of perception systems is done by waiting for these conditions to happen in real-life – which can easily cost weeks of waiting. When an update is done on the hardware of the perception system (e.g. a coating on the lens is added) the exact same test is needed to verify an improvement. However, in real-life this exact same harsh condition cannot be reproduced. So, there is a need for a modular, validated testing facility that allows controllable and measurable conditions, to enable repeatable and controlled harsh conditions. CAVE_INFRA aims to develop a fixed perception test facility which can control and measure rain, snow, fog, illumination, dust and debris conditions, including its digital twin and a real-life validation. We aim to provide the following services: i) Sensing hardware (incl coatings/cleaning systems) and software performance evaluation in harsh conditions, including benchmarking to support sensor selection ii) Harsh condition model and/or sensor model derivation iii) Training or validation of AI models for objects / human detection and pose estimation iv) Degradation tests in harsh conditions v) Generate test data and scenarios that can be used for driving out own research but also for certification purposes and discussions with certification bodies such as TuV. To produce the harsh conditions in realistic scenarios, there are different actuation systems foreseen to respectively actuate the perception system under test, the target objects to be detected, and some of the generated conditions such as diverse illumination systems to create dynamic contrast.

Keywords:DESIGN, SENSING, ROBUSTNESS, EVALUATION OF MEASUREMENTS

Disciplines:Smart sensors, Sensing, estimation and actuating, Analogue and digital signal processing

Project type:Collaboration project