Autonomous Driving Development Rapid Prototyping Using ROS and Simulink

Recent years have witnessed increasing interest in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AD) development, motivating the growth of new sensor technologies and control platforms. However, to keep pace with this acceleration and to evaluate system performance, a cost and time effective software development and testing framework is required. This paper presents an overview utilizing Robotic Operating System (ROS) middleware and MATLAB/Simulink® Robotics System Toolbox to achieve these goals. As an example of employing this framework for autonomous development and testing, this article utilizes the FEV Smart Vehicle Demonstrator. The demonstrator is a reconfigurable and modular platform highlighting the power and flexibility of using ROS and MATLAB/Simulink® for AD rapid prototyping. High-level autonomous path following and braking are presented as two case studies. Test results demonstrate the portability, maintainability, and reliability of the presented system.