V2X Connectivity with ROS for AD Applications

Increased levels of autonomy requires an increasing amount of sensory data for the vehicle to make appropriate decisions. Sensors like camera, Lidar and Radar will help to perceive the surroundings, exposing nearby objects and blind spots within the line of sight. With V2X connectivity, vehicles communicate to other vehicles and infrastructure using wireless communications even in non-line of sight conditions. This paper presents an approach to utilize a V2X system to develop Automated Driving (AD) features in a Robot Operating System (ROS) environment. This was achieved by developing ROS drivers and creating custom messages to enable the communication between the V2X system and vehicle sensors. The developed algorithms were tested on FEV’s Smart Vehicle Demonstrator. The test results show that the proposed V2X automated driving approach has increased reliability compared to that of camera, Radar and Lidar based autonomous driving.