Hardware-in-the-Loop System of the Autonomous Municipal Cleaning Vehicle

Autonomous municipal cleaning vehicles consist of a number of subsystems, and the most important for autonomy are the driving subsystem, the perception subsystem, and the cleaning subsystem. To prepare control algorithms for the real vehicle, all three subsystems must be functional. Simulation environments that simulate the driving subsystem already exist. The perception subsystem can be simulated to some extent, but its preparation can also be done by previously recorded information from non-autonomous vehicles. The control of cleaning subsystem is not easy to simulate. For this reason, in this paper, we present a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system for controlling the autonomous municipal cleaning vehicle, combining the rig of the real cleaning system with the simulation of vehicle motion and perception, which is the main contribution of this paper. We present the developed HIL system and the results of several experiments during the testing of the system.