Hybrid Testing: A Vehicle-in-the-Loop Testing Method for the Development of Automated Driving Functions

The development of automated driving and Adaptive Driver-Assistance System (ADAS) functions requires extensive testing and validation prior to deployment. In general, exhaustive real-life scenario validation of such systems is not feasible and is overly time consuming. Moreover, simulation-only evaluations and testing are often deemed as inadequate due to the unmodeled dynamics and the lack of 1-1 correspondence with real-life testing. As a remedy, we describe in this article a novel test methodology called the "Hybrid Testing,"which was developed in the scope of the EU-H2020 project INFRAMIX, which enables the evaluation of a real vehicle in a virtual scenario in an enclosed proving ground with simulated traffic components and sensor signals, thereby combining the benefits of simulation and real-life testing. We show the utilization of this novel testing methodology for the evaluation of a trajectory planning (TP) algorithm to demonstrate its working principles and benefits.