High-Fidelity Ultrasonic Radar In-the-Loop Accelerated Test for Automatic Parking Systems

The ultrasonic radar is a crucial part of the automatic parking system (APS) and requires thorough testing to ensure safety. The field operational test (FOT) is expensive and inefficient, making simulation testing the preferred method for evaluating autonomous driving systems. However, a gap remains between the performance of current simulation ultrasonic radar models and the real-world ultrasonic radars in real driving environments. To address these challenges, an ultrasonic radar in-the-loop accelerated test method for APS is proposed. First, a high-fidelity ultrasonic radar in-the-loop test bench is established and validated. To reduce the high cost and time duration of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, a Bayesian optimization (BO)-based accelerated testing framework is designed, minimizing test numbers by using the prior information to guide the search process. Finally, experiments are conducted using the ultrasonic radar in-the-loop test bench to compare the Bayesian accelerated test with the combination test (CT) for the automatic parking algorithm. The test results indicate that the ultrasonic radar in-the-loop test bench demonstrates greater authenticity and accuracy than the simulation software, while the HIL testing offers improved efficiency and safety compared to the FOT. Moreover, the efficiency of the Bayesian accelerated test is 4.9 times greater than that of the CT while still ensuring adequate scenario coverage.