Development of a Procedure to Correlate, Validate and Confirm Radar Characteristics of Surrogate Targets for ADAS Testing

Surrogate targets are used throughout the automotive industry to safely and repeatably test Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and will likely find similar applications in tests of Automated Driving Systems. For those test results to be applicable to real-world scenarios, the surrogate targets must be representative of the real-world objects that they emulate. Early target development efforts were generally divided into those that relied on sophisticated radar measurement facilities and those that relied on ad-hoc measurements using automotive grade equipment. This situation made communication and interpretation of results between research groups, target developers and target users difficult. SAE J3122, “Test Target Correlation - Radar Characteristics”, was developed by the SAE Active Safety Systems Standards Committee to address this and other challenges associated with target development and use. J3122 addresses four topics. First, it describes standardized equipment and procedures for making various types of calibrated radar measurements using automotive grade equipment, with minimal measurement site restrictions. Second, a correlation procedure is provided that is used to define validity regions and properties of representative real-world objects. Third, a validation procedure is provided for comparing candidate targets against measurements of representative objects using an objective correlation score. Finally, a confirmation procedure is provided for checking in-use targets to verify that they continue to be acceptable for testing. This paper describes each of these topics as well as the process development.