Open-source CiThruS simulation environment for real-time 360-degree traffic imaging

Abstract

This paper presents an open-source simulation environment for 360-degree traffic imaging. The environment is built on the openly available AirSim Windridge City Asset. In this work, the city is populated with custom autonomous vehicles and pedestrians. The vehicles navigate along a designed node map that can be manually placed on the roads according to the specified traffic regulations. The vehicles are also made to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, and traffic lights for simple collision avoidance and smoother traffic flows in intersections. The pedestrians follow a NavMesh placed on the walkable areas and stop at the traffic lights when crossing the streets. Weather effects, time-of-day, and rain distortion lens shader bring the environment more close to the reality. The whole system is built on top of free and self-made assets, making it easy to use, configure, and extend. The performance of the simulator exceeds 60 frames per second when run on NVIDIA RTX 2070 with Intel Xeon E5-2620 or equivalent hardware.