Design and Implementation of Smart Infrastructures and Connected Vehicles in A MiniCity Platform

Daniel Vargas, Ethan Amit Haque, Golnaz Habibi, Tyler Roman, Phong Nguyen, Daniel Perez, Matthew Carroll

Abstract:

This paper presents a 1/10th scale MiniCity
platform used as a testing bed for evaluating autonomous
and connected vehicles. Using the MiniCity platform, we can
evaluate different driving scenarios including human-driven
and autonomous driving. We provide a unique, visual featurerich environment for evaluating computer vision methods. The
conducted experiments utilize onboard sensors mounted on
a robotic platform we built, allowing them to navigate in a
controlled real-world urban environment. The designed city is
occupied by cars, stop signs, a variety of residential and business
buildings, and complex intersections mimicking an urban area.
Furthermore, We have designed an intelligent infrastructure at
one of the intersections in the city which helps safer and more
efficient navigation in the presence of multiple cars and pedestrians. We have used the MiniCity platform for the analysis of
three different applications: city mapping, depth estimation in
challenging occluded environments, and smart infrastructure
for connected vehicles. Our smart infrastructure is among the
first to develop and evaluate Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I)
communication at intersections. The intersection-related result
shows how inaccuracy in perception, including mapping and
localization, can affect safety. The proposed MiniCity platform
can be considered as a baseline environment for developing
research and education in intelligent transportation systems.