Using SUMO for Test Automation and Demonstration of Digitalized Railway Concepts

The Train Dispatcher in the Cloud (ZLiC) is a cloud-based approach to digitalize the German Zugleitbetrieb (comparable to American track warrant control). The ZLiC aims to replace the train dispatcher with speech to text, natural-language understanding, a digital occupancy sheet, a prototype interlocking logic, and text to speech. For train conductors, who operate on the trains, the voice-based communication with the train dispatcher remains unchanged. Because the external interfaces of the ZLiC are either voice-based or graphic, understanding and testing the internal components from an integration level is a challenge. To address these challenges, we first injected the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) as a simulation environment. Since the ZLiC has been developed model-based, the integration requires minimal modifications. Afterward, we fetch the operation commands (e.g., registering trains, locating trains, drive requests for trains) between the components and send them to a SUMO instance for analyzing and visualizing the train operations in the railway network. Lastly, we insert additional planned trains to add simulated traffic. The reproducible operations enable test automation of the ZLiC while reusing the sophisticated models in SUMO. This prototype shows that SUMO can support the development of digitalized railway operating procedures.