Cloe

Cloe empowers developers of automated-driving software components by providing a unified interface to closed-loop simulation. It achieves this by abstracting over environment and vehicle simulators and building upon these.

Using these abstractions, it is then possible to provide features such as the following:

• Support for alternate simulators (currently: CarMaker or VTD)
• Testing with perfect ground-truth sensor data
• Phenomenological sensor models and fault-injection
• Dynamic and scripted event injection via trigger system
• Easy integration in continuous integration environments via Docker
• Access to running simulations via REST-based JSON API
• Visualization of function and simulation state via HTML5 and Javascript
• Simulation speed adjustments and debugging of system-under-test

For example, a developer of an ADAS can use these features to iterate more quickly on a function before making an expensive trip with flashing a system in a vehicle and driving around for several hours.

Using Cloe helped us find a critical bug in 2 hours which in the vehicle would have probably taken several weeks to find. – PJ-DC Developer

Cloe aims to make it easy for developers to create a Cloe Controller (also known as agent or actor) that acts as a binding between Cloe and the system-under-test or ADAS (e.g. ACC, TJP).

For long-term development, the current strategy is to enable Cloe to be used for massively scaled continuous-testing and evaluation with a multitude of scenarios. Additionally, Cloe aims to simplify orchestration of simulation suites. To this end, further features may include the support for scripting. (For more information on the concreate roadmap, please talk to Thomas Grosser.

It is important to note the limitations of Cloe and the project however, to preclude misunderstandings:

• Cloe does not actually simulate the environment.

  That would be a lot of work that would take many years to accomplish. Instead we use other simulators, such as VTD and CarMaker to do the heavy lifting. In that sense, Cloe is only middleware.

• Cloe is not a validation and verification framework, it is not certified for this purpose.

  This may change in the future, but for now it's off the table.

• Cloe is not a virtual HIL, we abstract from any EE architecture.

  We cannot provide the features that we do at EE abstraction level. Additionally, this would not be performant enough for most of our use-cases. Consider talking to the XIL team if you need this.

• No setup-and-forget simulation tool off-the-shelf.

  You can't just apt-get install cloe (yet). Cloe has certain requirements that must be met: at minimum you will need to write a controller-binding from your ADAS to Cloe. See the Requirements section.

• We cannot maintain your ADAS binding to Cloe, but we will help you.

  We would like to focus on delivering high-quality Cloe features that everyone can use. Also, we are not experts in your function domain. That said, where we can help, we (probably) will.

• Writing GUIs is not our core-competence.

  Our goals is to empower GUI-developers to be able to write the best GUI they can to interact with Cloe, but anything we provide will be best-effort only. Independent user-groups are encouraged to develop GUIs for their use-cases. However, all core feature development occurs independent of this.

Installation and Usage

Requirements that must be met before you can simulate with Cloe are currently varied, and depend strongly on your specific use-case. In general, the following is required:

• Linux operating system

  Cloe is primarily developed under Linux for various reasons, but we strive to make it as cross-platform as possible. See Linux Requirements.

• nVidia graphics card

  Certain simulators, such as VTD, require that a physical nVidia graphics card is available on the system. This makes virtualization difficult.

• Simulator with license

  We currently support Vires VTD and IPG CarMaker as simulator bindings. These tools are not for free however, and need to be somehow acquired. In the future, we would like to support at least one open-source simulator.

• Controller binding to Cloe

  Cloe can't magically understand how to talk with your software: you need to manually write a binding to Cloe. We will try to help you where we can, however. See Writing a Controller Binding.

If the above requirements are fulfilled, and you have a controller binding, then you essentially only have to do the following, adjusting as necessary to your project:

1. Clone the Cloe repository
2. Install build- and runtime-dependencies
3. Install a simulator binding (eg. VTD)
4. Configure project and source the respective setup.(bash|zsh) file.
5. Generate build files via CMake for your desired setup (./configure [options]).
6. Build the project (make all)!

More detailed information can be found in this document. If the problem persists, contact us on RocketChat, write us a mail, or open an issue on Track&Release.

Contributing

Frequently Asked Questions

• What 3rd-party libraries do you use?

  We use several open source libraries as part of Cloe, some of which we ship with the Cloe source code. These can found in the vendor/ directory. The list of these included libraries and their licenses can be found in the LICENSE.md file.

  We provide bindings to two commercial simulators. These bindings use development files from these simulators, in part through simple includes, in part through patch-files, as is technologically necessary.

  • Vires VTD
  • IPG CarMaker

  Other libraries and tools we use that we link to at compile time but do not ship can be found in CMakeLists.txt. Sometimes we provide a script to help install them. An incomplete list of these external libraries and tools includes the following:

  • Cap'n Proto
  • ZMQ
  • Boost
  • Eigen3

  Language development tools we currently use include the following, but is not limited to:

  • GCC
  • Git
  • Python
  • Clang
  • CMake
  • Bash, Zsh
  • Docker
  • Jenkins
  • Doxygen

• Does Cloe support feature X for my controller Y?

  This will be documented in the future.

• Will you implement my controller?

  No, we will not. However, we will help you. Read the rest of this document first, though please.

• How do I integrate Cloe in my CI pipeline?

  This will be documented in the future.