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TUM Teleoperation: Open Source Software for Remote Driving and Assistance of Automated Vehicles

Tobias Kerbl, David Brecht, Nils Gehrke, Nijinshan Karunainayagam, Niklas Krauss, Florian Pfab, Richard Taupitz, Ines Trautmannsheimer, Xiyan Su, Maria-Magdalena Wolf, Frank Diermeyer

TL;DR

The paper addresses the lack of open-source baselines for teleoperation of automated vehicles by introducing the TUM Teleoperation Software, a modular ROS 2 stack that supports Remote Driving and Remote Assistance with standardized interfaces for real-world and simulation platforms. It details a layered architecture with vehicle and operator interfaces, a bi-directional network, a flexible HMI, safety and logging modules, and two teleoperation concepts (Direct Control and Trajectory Guidance). The authors demonstrate end-to-end operation on EDGAR, vEDGAR, and RoboRacer, and provide latency benchmarks for video, rendering, and control transmissions, establishing baselines for future research. This open-source framework lowers entry barriers, promotes reproducible experiments, and enables collaborative development of teleoperation, safety, and user-interface components in automated driving research.

Abstract

Teleoperation is a key enabler for future mobility, supporting Automated Vehicles in rare and complex scenarios beyond the capabilities of their automation. Despite ongoing research, no open source software currently combines Remote Driving, e.g., via steering wheel and pedals, Remote Assistance through high-level interaction with automated driving software modules, and integration with a real-world vehicle for practical testing. To address this gap, we present a modular, open source teleoperation software stack that can interact with an automated driving software, e.g., Autoware, enabling Remote Assistance and Remote Driving. The software featuresstandardized interfaces for seamless integration with various real-world and simulation platforms, while allowing for flexible design of the human-machine interface. The system is designed for modularity and ease of extension, serving as a foundation for collaborative development on individual software components as well as realistic testing and user studies. To demonstrate the applicability of our software, we evaluated the latency and performance of different vehicle platforms in simulation and real-world. The source code is available on GitHub

TUM Teleoperation: Open Source Software for Remote Driving and Assistance of Automated Vehicles

TL;DR

The paper addresses the lack of open-source baselines for teleoperation of automated vehicles by introducing the TUM Teleoperation Software, a modular ROS 2 stack that supports Remote Driving and Remote Assistance with standardized interfaces for real-world and simulation platforms. It details a layered architecture with vehicle and operator interfaces, a bi-directional network, a flexible HMI, safety and logging modules, and two teleoperation concepts (Direct Control and Trajectory Guidance). The authors demonstrate end-to-end operation on EDGAR, vEDGAR, and RoboRacer, and provide latency benchmarks for video, rendering, and control transmissions, establishing baselines for future research. This open-source framework lowers entry barriers, promotes reproducible experiments, and enables collaborative development of teleoperation, safety, and user-interface components in automated driving research.

Abstract

Teleoperation is a key enabler for future mobility, supporting Automated Vehicles in rare and complex scenarios beyond the capabilities of their automation. Despite ongoing research, no open source software currently combines Remote Driving, e.g., via steering wheel and pedals, Remote Assistance through high-level interaction with automated driving software modules, and integration with a real-world vehicle for practical testing. To address this gap, we present a modular, open source teleoperation software stack that can interact with an automated driving software, e.g., Autoware, enabling Remote Assistance and Remote Driving. The software featuresstandardized interfaces for seamless integration with various real-world and simulation platforms, while allowing for flexible design of the human-machine interface. The system is designed for modularity and ease of extension, serving as a foundation for collaborative development on individual software components as well as realistic testing and user studies. To demonstrate the applicability of our software, we evaluated the latency and performance of different vehicle platforms in simulation and real-world. The source code is available on GitHub

Paper Structure

This paper contains 23 sections, 10 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Contribution
  4. Requirements On The Software Design
  5. TUM Teleoperation Software
  6. Vehicle Interface
  7. Network
  8. Operator Interface
  9. State Machine
  10. Monitoring
  11. Safety
  12. Logging
  13. Teleoperation Concepts
  14. Direct Control
  15. Trajectory Guidance
  16. ...and 8 more sections

Figures (10)

  • Figure 1: Teleoperation concepts Trajectory Guidance and Direct Control demonstrated on teleoperation workstations and research platforms vEDGAR karle2024, RoboRacer roboracer2025, and EDGARkarle2024
  • Figure 2: Architecture of the TUM Teleoperation Software with the included teleoperation concepts Direct Control and Trajectory Guidance
  • Figure 3: State diagram of operator and vehicle state machine
  • Figure 4: Operator Interface in Direct Control mode
  • Figure 5: Operator Interface in Trajectory Guidance mode
  • ...and 5 more figures