Building a Test Bed for the Periodical Technical Inspection of Sensors Perceiving the Environment in Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

With the introduction of the first available autonomous vehicles, the safety and reliability of these systems becomes even more relevant than it was in regard to driver assistance systems, as the driver is not necessarily available to immediately take over in controlling the vehicle. Especially the environmental perception of the individual vehicle plays a key part in its ability to navigate the public roads. At the same time, the sensors used for the perception are very likely to differ between individual vehicles over their lifespan due to maintenance and environmental differences as well as different incidents, that might impact their functionality. The periodical technical inspection of road vehicles is an established tool to ensure the technical capabilities of vehicles that are using public roads. In this paper, we present a more detailed overview of some of our suggestions to advance the periodical technical inspection for passenger cars with regard to advancing driver assistance systems and autonomous driving vehicles as these systems are having a wider impact on the technical state of the vehicle. The focus in this paper is put specifically onto the sensors for the environmental perception of the surroundings of the vehicle. We therefore present herein a test bed with artificial targets for the periodical technical inspection to evaluate the sensor systems and facilitate the vehicles roadworthiness classification based on the promising results of our preliminary tests.