Motivating the need for an integrated software architecture for Connected and Automated Vehicles technologies development and testing

With the spread of automation in driving, vehicles will have to interact more with the surrounding environment, and consequently the automotive development process will have to contemplate a realistic representation of these elements. This is a critical issue, since in the classic development process used in the automotive field, driver model and traffic environment are represented in a very simplified way. This paper overcomes this criticality through the development of an Integrated Simulation Environment, at the Model in the Loop (MIL) level, which allows the integrated representation of the vehicle dynamic and its automation, of the driver and the traffic conditions. The tool is based on integrated simulation of MATLAB / Simulink with the commercial software CarRealTime and with SUMO, an open source microscopic simulator. A series of tests have been performed to prove the need for such a tool, and to show the potential of the instrument. The implemented system allows vehicle, represented with a high level of details, to be tested in realistic traffic scenarios, in which agents and characteristic variables of traffic flow can be varied in order to verify realistically the level of robustness of on-board automation functions.