Use Cases and Methods of Virtual ADAS/ADS Calibration in Simulation

Integration, testing, and release of complex Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) is one of the main challenges in the field of automated driving. In order for the systems to be accepted by customers and to compete in the market, they have to feature functional, comfortable, safe, efficient, and natural driving behavior. The calibration process acquires increasing importance in the achievement of this objective. Complex ADAS/ADS require the optimization of interacting calibration parameters in a large number of different scenarios—a task that can hardly be performed with feasible effort and cost using conventional calibration methods. Virtual calibration in simulation enables reproducible and automated testing of different data sets of calibration parameters in various scenarios. These capabilities facilitate different use cases to extend the conventional calibration process of ADAS/ADS through virtual testing. This paper discusses the different use cases of virtual calibration and methods to achieve the desired objectives. A special focus is on a multi-scenario-level method that can be used to iteratively calibrate ADAS/ADS for optimal behavior in a variety of scenarios, resulting in a more comfortable, safe, and natural behavior of the system and still a feasible number of test cases. The presented methods are implemented for the virtual calibration of an Adaptive Cruise Control model for evaluation.