A team of researchers at The University of Cambridge has recently introduced a unique experimental testbed that could be used for experiments in cooperative driving. This testbed, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, consists of 16 miniature Ackermann-steering vehicles called Cambridge Minicars.
“Using true-scale facilities for vehicle testbeds is expensive and requires a vast amount of space,” Amanda Prorok. “Our main objective was to build a low-cost, multi-vehicle experimental setup that is easy to maintain and that is easy to use to prototype new autonomous driving algorithms. In particular, we were interested in testing and tangibly demonstrating the benefits of cooperative driving on multi-lane road topographies.”
Studies investigating cooperative driving are often expensive and time consuming due to a lack of available low-cost platforms that researchers can use to test their systems and algorithms. Prorok and her colleagues thus set out to develop an effective and inexpensive experimental testbed that could ultimately support research into cooperative driving and multi-car navigation.