Analysis of Real-Time LiDAR Sensor Simulation for Testing Automated Driving Functions on a Vehicle-in-the-Loop Testbench

A vehicle-in-the-loop (ViL) testbench offers the possibility to test complex scenarios with ready-to-drive vehicles. For this purpose, the environmental sensors are simulated or stimulated. Essential component as a LiDAR is for automated driving systems (AD), its realistic behavior is hard to stimulate on the testbench. We propose a physics-based LiDAR model, which is real-time capable and shows many realistic features. This model simulates the important effects of laser propagation and reflection, mirror reflection motion distortion, reflection detectability and beam divergence. Besides that, we measured the reflectance of materials of interest to determine the reflection model parameters. Experiments proved that the simulation is real-time capable and the results showed a good match with measured data.