Autonomous Filming of Test Cars : Application integration and autonomous control approach

Before vehicles that go to sale for public it goes through many stages of testing in different fields. All types of pre-production cars are the vehicles that come after prototypes which allow the OEM to find out possible issues by running different categories of tests. One of the most important fields of test is regarding safety. When it comes to autonomous cars, where safety is crucial, the number of tests to carry out, time for handling them and their complexity is increased. To reduce costs, complexity and time some of them might be simulated. After the analysis is done the cars have to be tested in real time to collect more data, not only from car sensors but also through observation from the tests filmed. This thesis contains an overview of whole project leading to develop an autonomous platform, driving after autonomous car and controlled by simulation environment and solving major issues of the project. The filming of autonomous cars remotely had two major issues. One of the issues was to integrate all the different software and platforms. The trajectories of the autonomous cars were controlled in different software and the trajectories of the RC were managed in different software. The solution to integrate all the software and platforms is shown in this thesis. The second issue was to make the RC car to follow the waypoints that are generated by simulation and by communicating with real car using a PID controller. The project is prepared for future improvements, like installing a camera to the RC car which will follow predefined test independently