AWSIM
AWSIM is an open-source simulator made with Unity for autonomous driving research and development. It is developed for self-driving software like Autoware. This simulator aims to bridge the gap between the virtual and real worlds, enabling users to train and evaluate their autonomous systems in a safe and controlled environment before deploying them on real vehicles. It provides a realistic virtual environment for training, testing, and evaluating various aspects of autonomous driving systems.
AWSIM simulates a variety of real-world scenarios, with accurate physics and sensor models. It offers a wide range of sensors, such as: Cameras, GNSS, IMU and LiDARs, allowing developers to simulate their autonomous vehicle's interactions with the environment accurately. The simulator also models dynamic objects, such as pedestrians, other vehicles, and traffic lights, making it possible to study interactions and decision-making in complex traffic scenarios. This enables the testing and evaluation of perception, planning, and control algorithms under different sensor configurations and scenarios.
AWSIM supports a flexible and modular architecture, making it easy to customize and extend its capabilities. Users can modify the current or add a new environment with their own assets and traffic rules to create custom scenarios to suit their specific research needs. This allows for the development and testing of advanced algorithms in diverse driving conditions.
Because AWSIM was developed mainly to work with Autoware, it supports:
- Ubuntu 22.04 and Windows 10/11
- ROS2 Humble distribution
Prerequisites
You can read more about the prerequisites and running AWSIM here.
Connection with Autoware
Introduction about how the connection between AWSIM and Autoware works can be read here.
Architecture
To describe the architecture of AWSIM, first of all, it is necessary to mention the Scene. It contains all the objects occurring in the simulation of a specific scenario and their configurations. The default AWSIM scene that is developed to work with Autoware is called AutowareSimulation. For more information, click here.
The primary AUT_DT scene, developed specifically for DT research, is named Amirkabir_DT_Scene. This scene serves as a sample scene. Its key component is the DetectionSubscriber object. This object subscribes to the Perception module of Autoware and retrieves real-time detected objects from streaming LiDAR data. The next important object is the SpawnPoint which should always be the location of the static LiDAR recording the real-world environment.