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Small-Scale Testbeds for Connected and Automated Vehicles and Robot Swarms: Challenges and a Roadmap

Jianye Xu, Bassam Alrifaee, Johannes Betz, Armin Mokhtarian, Archak Mittal, Mengchi Cai, Rahul Mangharam, Omar M. Shehata, Catherine M. Elias, Jan-Nico Zaech, Patrick Scheffe, Felix Jahncke, Sangeet Sankaramangalam Ulhas, Kaj Munhoz Arfvidsson

TL;DR

The paper identifies two broad families of challenges facing small-scale testbeds for connected and automated vehicles and robot swarms: transition challenges (notably the sim2real gap and cross-scale transfer) and inherent real-world challenges (environmental unpredictability and distributed computing demands). It then presents a three-part roadmap inspired by the IV 2024 workshop: Part A to enhance accessibility and diversity; Part B to codify best practices, including open-source collaboration and modular design; and Part C to connect disparate testbeds through a standardized abstraction layer. The roadmap emphasizes remote access, inclusive data collection, and cross-testbed collaboration to broaden participation and accelerate validation. Collectively, these contributions offer a practical blueprint for developing, sharing, and integrating small-scale testbeds to advance CAV and robot-swarm research with real-world relevance. The work aims to foster broader participation, more robust validation, and accelerated innovation through standardized interfaces and shared resources across institutions and regions.

Abstract

This article proposes a roadmap to address the current challenges in small-scale testbeds for Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and robot swarms. The roadmap is a joint effort of participants in the workshop "1st Workshop on Small-Scale Testbeds for Connected and Automated Vehicles and Robot Swarms," held on June 2 at the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV) 2024 in Jeju, South Korea. The roadmap contains three parts: 1) enhancing accessibility and diversity, especially for underrepresented communities, 2) sharing best practices for the development and maintenance of testbeds, and 3) connecting testbeds through an abstraction layer to support collaboration. The workshop features eight invited speakers, four contributed papers [1]-[4], and a presentation of a survey paper on testbeds [5]. The survey paper provides an online comparative table of more than 25 testbeds, available at https://bassamlab.github.io/testbeds-survey. The workshop's own website is available at https://cpm-remote.lrt.unibw-muenchen.de/iv24-workshop.

Small-Scale Testbeds for Connected and Automated Vehicles and Robot Swarms: Challenges and a Roadmap

TL;DR

The paper identifies two broad families of challenges facing small-scale testbeds for connected and automated vehicles and robot swarms: transition challenges (notably the sim2real gap and cross-scale transfer) and inherent real-world challenges (environmental unpredictability and distributed computing demands). It then presents a three-part roadmap inspired by the IV 2024 workshop: Part A to enhance accessibility and diversity; Part B to codify best practices, including open-source collaboration and modular design; and Part C to connect disparate testbeds through a standardized abstraction layer. The roadmap emphasizes remote access, inclusive data collection, and cross-testbed collaboration to broaden participation and accelerate validation. Collectively, these contributions offer a practical blueprint for developing, sharing, and integrating small-scale testbeds to advance CAV and robot-swarm research with real-world relevance. The work aims to foster broader participation, more robust validation, and accelerated innovation through standardized interfaces and shared resources across institutions and regions.

Abstract

This article proposes a roadmap to address the current challenges in small-scale testbeds for Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and robot swarms. The roadmap is a joint effort of participants in the workshop "1st Workshop on Small-Scale Testbeds for Connected and Automated Vehicles and Robot Swarms," held on June 2 at the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV) 2024 in Jeju, South Korea. The roadmap contains three parts: 1) enhancing accessibility and diversity, especially for underrepresented communities, 2) sharing best practices for the development and maintenance of testbeds, and 3) connecting testbeds through an abstraction layer to support collaboration. The workshop features eight invited speakers, four contributed papers [1]-[4], and a presentation of a survey paper on testbeds [5]. The survey paper provides an online comparative table of more than 25 testbeds, available at https://bassamlab.github.io/testbeds-survey. The workshop's own website is available at https://cpm-remote.lrt.unibw-muenchen.de/iv24-workshop.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 46 sections, 5 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Challenges
  3. Transition Challenges
  4. sim2real Gap
  5. Simulation Fidelity
  6. Dynamic Environment Complexity
  7. Multi-Agent Interaction Fidelity
  8. Small-Scale to Full-Scale Transition Challenges
  9. Localization
  10. Perception
  11. Actuation
  12. Uncertainty Modeling
  13. Inherent Real-World Challenges
  14. Environmental Unpredictability
  15. Mixed Traffic
  16. ...and 31 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: A collage of photographs from the workshop.
  • Figure 2: A case study of modeling a human-driven vehicle scheffe2023scaled.
  • Figure 3: Case studies of low-cost education platforms.
  • Figure 4: A case study of remote access (CPM Remote mokhtarian2022remote) of a testbed (the cpmlab kloock2021cyberphysical).
  • Figure 5: A case study of connecting two small-scale testbeds: the cpmlab kloock2021cyberphysical and IDS3C chalaki2022research.