A system for generating complex physically accurate sensor images for automotive applications

Abstract: We describe an open-source simulator that creates sensor irradiance and sensor images of typical automotive scenes in urban settings. The purpose of the system is to support camera design and testing for automotive applications. The user can specify scene parameters (e.g., scene type, road type, traffic density, time of day) to assemble a large number of random scenes from graphics assets stored in a database. The sensor irradiance is generated using quantitative computer graphics methods, and the sensor images are created using image systems sensor simulation. The synthetic sensor images have pixel level annotations; hence, they can be used to train and evaluate neural networks for imaging tasks, such as object detection and classification. The end-to-end simulation system supports quantitative assessment, from scene to camera to network accuracy, for automotive applications.