Augmented Reality on LiDAR data: Going beyond Vehicle-in-the-Loop for Automotive Software Validation

Testing and validating advanced automotive software is of paramount importance to guarantee safety and quality. While real-world testing is highly demanding and simulation testing is not reliable, we propose a new augmented reality framework that takes advantage of both environments. This new testing methodology is intended to be a bridge between Vehicle-in-the-Loop and real-world testing. It enables to easily and safely place the whole vehicle and all its software, from perception to control, in realistic test conditions. This framework provides a flexible way to introduce any virtual element in the outputs of the sensors of the vehicle under test. For each modality of sensing, the framework requires a real time augmentation function that preserves real sensor data and enhances them with virtual data. The LiDAR data augmentation function is presented together with its implementation details. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative analysis of experimental results, the representability of tests scenes generated by the augmented reality framework is finally proven.