Simulate hardware-software interface
Consider the set of problem:
If we have a driverless car that we want to upload our software on (maybe like pedestrian detection), we could simply build our own simulation to test if our algorithm is working perfectly fine and upload it after running some test on our simulation but the issue with this method is that the car could potentially just use an "unrealistic" vehicle dynamics (maybe using a bicycle dynamics insted of a four wheeled vehicle dynamics) yet the algorithm should work just fine since it is just planning and control algorithm and as long as we are able to model data from real life to the simulation, we could get a robust planning algorithm.
However, my main concern here is that how do I possibly make sure that our stack is capable of "communicating" with the hardware properly like getting readings from the tires, steering(?) etc and later on, give the real car commands to accelerate and steer. Is there any method we could use to simulate this behaviour?
In my mind, I am imagining companies like Tesla have their own prototype car in which they could handle all the hardware-software interface testing, but what about small companies that do not have the budget for such prototype. Is there any way to go about this and simulate this testing?
It would be great to hear some thoughts about this as I am curious on how certain things are implemented to get the best possible result!
