Simulation of Roadside LiDAR Applications: A Smart Work Zone Case Study

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) have the capability to detect 360-degree surrounding objects with high accuracy (centimeter level), high frequency (a tenth of a second), and long measuring distance (up to 750 feet radius or longer for a 128-channel LiDAR with the highest resolution). Currently, high-resolution LiDAR has been primarily used in autonomous vehicles because of its cost; but more and more roadside applications with entry-level LiDAR can now be found in the field. The deployment of LiDAR sensors along a road network can provide high-resolution micro data of all traffic, which will significantly change the current connected vehicle deployment and other traffic engineering applications. However, developing and testing roadside LiDAR applications and traffic scenarios in the real world requires significant time, resources and expense, and can present high risks in dangerous applications such as work zone scenarios. This study focuses on using a 3D virtual environment to enable testing of roadside LiDAR applications and hence significantly reduces the amount of required road tests in the real-world. The simulation is based on a co-simulation framework for modeling and visualizing driving algorithms in MATLAB/Simulink® in a rich simulation environment powered by Unreal Engine®. The results from a smart work zone (SWZ) case study clearly shows the developed simulation framework can facilitate the development of perception and control algorithms, verify the system’s functionality, and improve robustness at the system level.