Co-simulation of the virtual vehicle in virtual traffic considering tactical driver decisions

Recent developments such as increasing automation and connectivity of vehicles as well as new regulations for real driving emissions lead to a stronger consideration of traffic and traffic control in automotive development. The increasing complexity of vehicular systems requires a highly virtualized development process. Therefore, a cosimulation solution of DYNA4’s virtual vehicle with SUMO’s microscopic traffic is presented here. Despite increasing automation, virtual test drives often still require a virtual test driver. Thus, the co-simulation solution is extended by combining the driver models of both tools. The operational decision making level of DYNA4 is extended by SUMO’s tactical driver decisions, aiming at virtual test drives in complex surrounding traffic with realistic reaction on traffic and traffic control and reduced parametrization effort. By comparing two variants it is shown that a higher reference speed and more aggressive lane change parameters lead to an increase of usage of the left lane and an increase in achieved speeds.