WorldSim

Advancing the safety of Autonomous Vehicle using synthetic data

Making as Simulated World with Unreal

Initially World Sim started as a tool to test vehicle sensors against an infinite amount of scenarios with accurate physics simulated. As the software began to pick up more interest people wanted visuals of what the scenarios looked like to test other camera sensors as well as get an idea of what the AI was seeing. I came on to the project to provide those visuals for our moving actors and set up a workflow for future content. As the software continued to grow we adding a dynamic UI to give the user control of their scenarios and since then we have been spot lit by for creating a self contained software completely in UE4.

UI & DYNAMIC ACTORS

Working very closely with the Engineering Team and Product Designer implemented all the UI and interactive features. This included all the widgets and responsive 3D elements like locators, bounding boxes and trajectories. I also developed the dynamic visual parameters of vehicle and pedestrian.

DEVELOPING A VEHICLE ASSET LIBRARY

After creating a parent actor with physics and modifiable visual parameters I gathered a small team of 3D modelers and guided them through the process of making optimized vehicle models for the product. I also created materials for the vehicles that utilized packed texture maps for masking so that each part of the vehicle could be modified through the engine itself and stay consistent to the other vehicles regardless of the creator and their process. These materials were also optimized to not be too taxing on the engine during run time.

CREATING MODULAR PEDESTRIAN ACTORS

Using blend shapes, modular meshes, custom materials and bone deformations I created dynamic pedestrian actors that could randomize their weight, height, skin tone and apparel with out breaking animations and shared animations across classes.

OPTIMIZATION AND ANIMATION RECYCLING

Before adding these meshes I made sure to create LODs for the actors and used the same mesh geometry so that the LODs and rigs could be easily transferable to the other types of pedestrian and their clothes. I also created one master rig that would be used to create the animations for all the actors and instead of hand animating or starting from scratch I used constraints to recycle older animations.