Mixed reality test environment for autonomous cars using Unity 3D and SUMO

Developing a vehicle is always a long and complex task. This is especially true for autonomous cars. Tasks performed by the driver are taken over by the vehicle and must be performed with maximum reliability. Developing these systems is a difficult task, especially due to limited testing capabilities. Testing a vehicle in a closed environment is safe and controlled, but the variety of test scenarios is limited. By using mixed reality environments, one can create a diverse environment around a real test vehicle, with traffic, obstacles, and unexpected situations. The real movement of the test vehicle allows testing decision and motion planning level vehicular functions. Information from the virtual world can be considered as input to the vehicle sensor. Mixed reality or digital twin simulation environments can greatly assist the autonomous vehicle development process and also serve as a basis for validation procedures for such systems. This article introduces a mixed reality simulation environment that integrates a real test vehicle into a virtual environment, can handle other real and virtual obstacles, contains traffic simulations, and visualizes all of these.