Architecture Design and Implementation of an Autonomous Vehicle

Architecture design is one of the most important problems for an intelligent system. In this paper, a practical framework of hardware and software is proposed to reveal the external configuration and internal mechanism of an autonomous vehicle—a typical intelligent system. The main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, we compare the advantages and disadvantages of three typical sensor plans and introduce a general autopilot for a vehicle. Second, we introduce a software architecture for an autonomous vehicle. The perception and planning performances are improved with the help of two inner loops of simultaneous localization and mapping. An algorithm to enlarge the detection range of the sensors is proposed by adding an inner loop to the perception system. A practical feedback to restrain mutations of two adjacent planning periods is also realized by the other inner loop. Third, a cross-platform virtual server (named project cocktail) for data transmission and exchange is presented in detail. Through comparisons with the robot operating system, the performance of project cocktail is proven to be considerably better in terms of transmission delay and throughput. Finally, a report on an autonomous driving test implemented using the proposed architecture is presented, which shows the effectiveness, flexibility, stability, and low-cost of the overall autonomous driving system.