Virtual Generation of Lidar Data for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract: The area of autonomous vehicles is a growing field of research which has gainedpopularity in the later years. Companies such as Tesla and Volvo continuously workon creating vehicles that can autonomously navigate traffic with the use of differentsensors and algorithms. However, given the cost and risks of testing these in realworld scenarios there may be a need for simulation tools in which the algorithmscan be tested during development without the need for a real autonomous car.Thus opening the area of research for independent researchers and other actors withlimited financial means. This thesis presents the creation of such simulation tools.It is shown that sufficiently realistic simulation tools can be created using the gameengine Unity along with free assets from the unity asset store. The simulation can berun on an off-the-shelf computer with good results. However, some aspects that caninfluence the resolution of the sensor in real life scenarios, such as weather conditionsare not implemented.