Design of a universal self-driving system for urban scenarios — BIT-III in the 2011 Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge

The 2011 Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge (11'IVFC) tested self-driving systems in real urban scenarios. The entry of Beijing Institute of Technology: BIT-III finished the 10-kilometer long track in 28 minutes without human operation and obeyed traffic regulations in most circumstances. This paper presented the design and implementation of BIT-III. As a universal self-driving system, BIT-III valued extensibility and featured modularized system architecture. For a better compatibility with diverse sensing devices, BIT-III classified perception to be either OGM (Occupancy Grid Map)-oriented or object-oriented based on the output mode. To work in environments with uncertainties, BIT-III gave first priority to safety and stability in driving, and realized them in the core-level components as the instinct of the system. Even in the unknown environment in the ll'IVFC, BIT-III was able to drive smoothly without crashes.