A Survey on Small-Scale Testbeds for Connected and Automated Vehicles and Robot Swarms

TL;DR

Nine small-scale testbeds are closely examined and derived characteristics of testbeds based on the well-known sense–plan–act paradigm are derived, demonstrating how the derived characteristics can be used to present testbeds.

Abstract

Connected and automated vehicles and robot swarms hold transformative potential for enhancing safety, efficiency, and sustainability in the transportation and manufacturing sectors. Extensive testing and validation of these technologies is crucial for their deployment in the real world. While simulations are essential for initial testing, they often have limitations in capturing the complex dynamics of real-world interactions. This limitation underscores the importance of small-scale testbeds. These testbeds provide a realistic, cost-effective, and controlled environment for testing and validating algorithms, acting as an essential intermediary between simulation and full-scale experiments. This work serves to facilitate researchers' efforts in identifying existing small-scale testbeds suitable for their experiments and provide insights for those who want to build their own. In addition, it delivers a comprehensive survey of the current landscape of these testbeds. We derive 62 characteristics of testbeds based on the well-known sense-plan-act paradigm and offer an online table comparing 23 small-scale testbeds based on these characteristics. The online table is hosted on our designated public webpage https://bassamlab.github.io/testbeds-survey, and we invite testbed creators and developers to contribute to it. We closely examine nine testbeds in this paper, demonstrating how the derived characteristics can be used to present testbeds. Furthermore, we discuss three ongoing challenges concerning small-scale testbeds that we identified, i.e., small-scale to full-scale transition, sustainability, and power and resource management.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Collage showcasing diverse testbeds in the realm of Connected and Automated Vehicles and Robot Swarms.
• Figure 2: A screenshot of the publicly accessible online table webpage that lists all the testbeds investigated in this study.
• Figure 3: Cyber-Physical Mobility Lab, originally developed at RWTH Aachen University, now moved to University of the Bundeswehr Munich kloock_cyber-physical_2021.
• Figure 4: Robotarium testbed at Georgia Institute of Technology pickem2017robotarium.
• Figure 5: Information and Decision Science Lab Scaled Smart City (IDS3C) at Cornell University stager_scaled_2018.