Low speed autonomous shuttles emulating SAE Level L4 automated driving using human driver assisted autonomy have been operating in geo-fenced areas in several cities in the US and the rest of the world. These autonomous vehicles (AV) are operated by small to mid-sized technology companies that do not have the resources of automotive OEMs for carrying out exhaustive, comprehensive testing of their AV technology solutions before public road deployment. Due to the low speed of operation and hence not operating on roads containing highways, the base vehicles of these AV shuttles are not required to go through rigorous certification tests. The way the driver assisted AV technology is tested and allowed for public road deployment is continuously evolving but is not standardized and shows differences between the different states where these vehicles operate. Currently, AVs and AV shuttles deployed on public roads are using these deployments for testing and improving their technology. However, this is not the right approach. Safe and extensive testing in a lab and controlled test environment including Model-in-the-Loop (MiL), Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) and Autonomous-Vehicle-in-the-Loop (AViL) testing should be the prerequisite to such public road deployments. This paper presents three dimensional virtual modeling of an AV shuttle deployment site and simulation testing in this virtual environment. We have two deployment sites in Columbus of these AV shuttles through the Department of Transportation funded Smart City Challenge project named Smart Columbus. The Linden residential area AV shuttle deployment site of Smart Columbus is used as the specific example for illustrating the AV testing method proposed in this paper.

翻译：模拟SAE L4级自动驾驶的低速自动驾驶穿梭车（借助人类驾驶员辅助实现自主驾驶）目前已在包括美国在内的全球多个城市的地理围栏区域内运行。这些自动驾驶车辆由中小型科技公司运营，缺乏汽车原始设备制造商（OEM）在公共道路部署前对其自动驾驶技术方案进行详尽、全面测试的资源。由于其运行速度较慢且不涉及高速公路路段，这些自动驾驶穿梭车的底盘车辆无需通过严格的认证测试。目前，驾驶员辅助型自动驾驶技术的测试及公共道路部署许可流程持续演进，但尚未实现标准化，且各运营州之间存在差异。当前在公共道路上部署的自动驾驶车辆及穿梭车，实际仍在利用此类部署场景进行技术测试与升级，但这并非合理的开发路径。在实验室及受控测试环境中进行安全且充分的测试——包括模型在环（MiL）、硬件在环（HiL）及自动驾驶车辆在环（AViL）测试——应成为公共道路部署的先决条件。本文提出了自动驾驶穿梭车部署地点的三维虚拟建模方法，并在该虚拟环境中开展仿真测试。我们通过美国交通部资助的“智慧城市挑战”项目（Smart Columbus），在哥伦布市部署了两处此类穿梭车运行点。其中，Smart Columbus的Linden住宅区自动驾驶穿梭车部署点，被用作本文提出的自动驾驶测试方法的具体示范案例。