TITLE:
Methodical Approach to Integrate Human Movement Diversity in Real-Time into a Virtual Test Field for Highly Automated Vehicle Systems
AUTHORS:
René Degen, Alexander Tauber, Alexander Nüßgen, Marcus Irmer, Florian Klein, Christian Schyr, Mats Leijon, Margot Ruschitzka
KEYWORDS:
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems/Automated Driving (ADAS/AD), Autonomous Mobility, Virtual Testing, Motion Capture
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.12 No.3,
June
8,
2022
ABSTRACT: Recently, virtual realities and simulations
play important roles in the development of automated driving functionalities.
By an appropriate abstraction, they help to design, investigate and communicate
real traffic scenario complexity. Especially, for edge cases investigations of
interactions between vulnerable road users (VRU) and highly automated driving
functions, valid virtual models are essential for the quality of results. The
aim of this study is to measure, process and integrate real human movement behaviour
into a virtual test environment for highly automated vehicle functionalities.
The overall system consists of a georeferenced virtual city model and a vehicle
dynamics model, including probabilistic sensor descriptions. By motion capture
hardware, real humanoid behaviour is applied to a virtual human avatar in the
test environment. Through retargeting methods, which
enable the independency of avatar and person under test
(PuT) dimensions, the virtual avatar diversity is increased. To verify the biomechanical
behaviour of the virtual avatars, a qualitative study is performed, which funds
on a representative movement sequence. The results confirm the functionality of
the used methodology and enable PuT independence control of the virtual avatars
in real-time.