Rapid Development of an Autonomous Vehicle for the SAE AutoDrive Challenge II Competition

The SAE AutoDrive Challenge II is a four-year collegiate competition dedicated to developing a Level 4 autonomous vehicle by 2025. In January 2023, the participating teams each received a Chevy Bolt EUV. Within a span of five months, the second phase of the competition took place in Ann Arbor, MI. The authors of this contribution, who participated in this event as team Wisconsin Autonomous representing the University of Wisconsin–Madison, secured second place in static events and third place in dynamic events. This has been accomplished by reducing reliance on the actual vehicle platform and instead leveraging physical analogs and simulation. This paper outlines the software and hardware infrastructure of the competing vehicle, touching on issues pertaining sensors, hardware, and the software architecture employed on the autonomous vehicle. We discuss the LiDAR-camera fusion approach for object detection and the three-tier route planning and following systems. One of the defining aspects of our approach was leveraging early simulation and the use of physical analogs, which accelerated the development of the autonomy algorithms. In the process, we established a rapid autonomous vehicle development methodology that will anchor our technical effort in the third stage of the SAE AutoDrive Challenge II competition.

SAE Autodrive Challenge II是一项为期四年的大学竞赛，致力于2025年到2025年，旨在开发4级自动驾驶汽车。2023年1月，参与的团队各自获得了雪佛兰Bolt EUV。在密歇根州的安阿伯（Ann Arbor）举行。威斯康星州 - 麦迪逊（Madison）在静态事件中获得了第二名，而在动态事件中获得了第三名，这是通过在实际的车辆平台上减少退休而实现的，而是利用了物理模拟和模拟。涉及有关传感器，硬件和软件体系结构的问题，我们在自动驾驶汽车上讨论了激光摄像机融合方法的方法。对象检测和三层途径计划和以下系统。车辆开发方法将在SAE Autodrive Challenge II竞争的第三阶段奠定我们的技术工作。