An automatic scenario generator for validation of automated valet parking systems

A primary goal of self-driving car manufacturers is to create an autonomous car system that is clearly and demonstrably safer than an average human-controlled car. The real-world tests are expensive, time-consuming and potentially dangerous. The virtual simulation is therefore required. The autonomous driving valet parking is expected to be the first commercially available automated driving function without a human driver at the wheel (SAE Level 4). Although many simulation solutions for the automotive market already exist, none of them features the parking environments. In this paper, we propose a new software virtual scenario generator for the parking sites. The tool populates the synthetics parking maps with objects and actions related to these environments: the cars driving from the drop-off point towards the vacant slots and the randomly placed parked cars, each with a given probability of exiting its slot. The generated scenarios are in the OpenSCENARIO format and are fully simulated in the Virtual Test Drive simulator.