Mixed Reality Environment for Testing Automated Vehicle and Pedestrian Interaction

The test and development of Automated Driving Systems is usually realized by scenario based testing or virtual testing environments. These methods apply artificial targets to trigger the safety critical functions under specific predefined scenarios, as the NCAP or IIHS test catalogues. Despite having a good reproducibility, these approaches hardly permit the evaluation of new interaction concepts like external Human-Machine Interfaces (eHMIs), since the interaction between real users and the vehicle cannot be realistic reproduced without risks to the participants. The novel Mixed Reality Test Environment (MiRE) overcomes this limitation by the integration of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, Dynamic Vehicle-in-the-Loop (DynViL) and the Virtual Environment. In MiRE the movement and positioning of the vehicles and the VRUs are tracked in real time and reproduced in the virtual environment. Synthetic data from the virtual environment is generated to stimulate the vehicle and the human participant, enabling a safe interaction between both entities.