🤖 AI Summary
This work proposes the first fully distributed, decentralized multi-vehicle cooperative simulation framework based on Autoware, addressing the limitations of existing autonomous driving simulators that are often restricted to single-vehicle scenarios or rely on centralized control. The architecture concurrently executes multiple instances of Autoware Universe within a shared Unity environment, integrating ROS 2 Humble, AWSIM Labs, and the Zenoh communication layer to achieve low-latency, cross-host real-time synchronization. It enables advanced cooperative applications such as multi-vehicle autonomous valet parking and demonstrates, in a multi-machine setup, the feasibility and scalability of stable localization, reliable inter-vehicle communication, and closed-loop control without centralized coordination.
📝 Abstract
Simulating and validating coordination among multiple autonomous vehicles remains challenging, as many existing simulation architectures are limited to single-vehicle operation or rely on centralized control. This paper presents the Distributed Multi-Autonomous Vehicle Architecture (DMAVA), a simulation architecture that enables concurrent execution of multiple independent vehicle autonomy stacks distributed across multiple physical hosts within a shared simulation environment. Each vehicle operates its own complete autonomous driving stack while maintaining coordinated behavior through a data-centric communication layer. The proposed system integrates ROS 2 Humble, Autoware Universe, AWSIM Labs, and Zenoh to support high data accuracy and controllability during multi-vehicle simulation, enabling consistent perception, planning, and control behavior under distributed execution. Experiments conducted on multiple-host configurations demonstrate stable localization, reliable inter-host communication, and consistent closed-loop control under distributed execution. DMAVA also serves as a foundation for Multi-Vehicle Autonomous Valet Parking, demonstrating its extensibility toward higher-level cooperative autonomy. Demo videos and source code are available at: https://github.com/zubxxr/distributed-multi-autonomous-vehicle-architecture.