Accelerating Autonomous Vehicle Simulation

Autonomous vehicles need to be safe in any situation they encounter. Simulation plays a vital role in ensuring test coverage of all scenarios. Simulating traffic isn’t just about rendering cars and roads — it’s about controlling how every actor moves through a scene. At Uber ATG, setting up these motions could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 16 hours, making it nearly impossible to plan simulation work at scale.

For this project, I conducted research and testing to identify major contributors to simulation creation time. The solution incorporated inputs from evolving needs of operations teams, vehicle dynamics and data requirements from systems engineers, and best practices from experts in simulation and game-industry tooling. The resulting tools made simulation creation faster, while also making actor motion setup more predictable and far less frustrating for users.

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