Open Source Software for Teleoperated Driving

Teleoperation allows a human operator to remotely interact with and control a mobile robot in a dangerous or inaccessible area. Besides well-known applications such as space exploration or search and rescue operations, the application of teleoperation in the area of automated driving, i.e., teleoperated driving (ToD), is becoming more popular. Instead of an in-vehicle human fallback driver, a remote operator can connect to the vehicle using cellular networks and resolve situations that are beyond the automated vehicle (AV)'s operational design domain. Teleoperation of AVs, and unmanned ground vehicles in general, introduces different problems, which are the focus of ongoing research. This paper presents an open source ToD software stack, which was developed for the purpose of carrying out this research. As shown in three demonstrations, the software stack can be deployed with minor overheads to control various vehicle systems remotely.