Networked Roadside Perception Units for Autonomous Driving

TLDR

Vehicle‑to‑Everything communication improves autonomous driving by enhancing safety, efficiency, and comfort, and sensor data sharing—cooperative perception—is essential for protecting vulnerable road users in intelligent transport systems. The paper introduces a roadside perception unit that fuses sensors with roadside units, a software platform AutoC2X to enable cooperative perception, and a networked RSPU architecture linking units along a road. The authors evaluated the RSPU system and its networked variant through field tests, numerical analysis, and simulations, employing a priority algorithm to manage message delivery. Field tests confirmed that the RSPU can deliver messages to an autonomous vehicle within 100 ms even in worst‑case scenarios, while simulations show the priority algorithm yields a wide perception range, high delivery ratio, and low latency under heavy traffic.

Abstract

Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication enhances the capability of autonomous driving through better safety, efficiency, and comfort. In particular, sensor data sharing, known as cooperative perception, is a crucial technique to accommodate vulnerable road users in a cooperative intelligent transport system (ITS). In this paper, we describe a roadside perception unit (RSPU) that combines sensors and roadside units (RSUs) for infrastructure-based cooperative perception. We propose a software called AutoC2X that we designed to realize cooperative perception for RSPUs and vehicles. We also propose the concept of networked RSPUs, which is the inter-connection of RSPUs along a road over a wired network, and helps realize broader cooperative perception. We evaluated the RSPU system and the networked RSPUs through a field test, numerical analysis, and simulation experiments. Field evaluation showed that, even in the worst case, our RSPU system can deliver messages to an autonomous vehicle within 100 ms. The simulation result shows that the proposed priority algorithm achieves a wide perception range with a high delivery ratio and low latency, especially under heavy road traffic conditions.