DART: A Compact Platform For Autonomous Driving Research

Abstract: This paper presents the design of a research platform for autonomous driving applications, the Delft's Autonomous-driving Robotic Testbed (DART). Our goal was to design a small-scale car-like robot equipped with all the hardware needed for on-board navigation and control while keeping it cost-effective and easy to replicate. To develop DART, we built on an existing off-the-shelf model and augmented its sensor suite to improve its capabilities for control and motion planning tasks. We detail the hardware setup and the system identification challenges to derive the vehicle's models. Furthermore, we present some use cases where we used DART to test different motion planning applications to show the versatility of the platform. Finally, we provide a git repository with all the details to replicate DART, complete with a simulation environment and the data used for system identification.