  This paper presents the CAT Vehicle (Cognitive and Autonomous Test Vehicle)
Testbed: a research testbed comprised of a distributed simulation-based
autonomous vehicle, with straightforward transition to hardware in the loop
testing and execution, to support research in autonomous driving technology.
The evolution of autonomous driving technology from active safety features and
advanced driving assistance systems to full sensor-guided autonomous driving
requires testing of every possible scenario. However, researchers who want to
demonstrate new results on a physical platform face difficult challenges, if
they do not have access to a robotic platform in their own labs. Thus, there is
a need for a research testbed where simulation-based results can be rapidly
validated through hardware in the loop simulation, in order to test the
software on board the physical platform. The CAT Vehicle Testbed offers such a
testbed that can mimic dynamics of a real vehicle in simulation and then
seamlessly transition to reproduction of use cases with hardware. The simulator
utilizes the Robot Operating System (ROS) with a physics-based vehicle model,
including simulated sensors and actuators with configurable parameters. The
testbed allows multi-vehicle simulation to support vehicle to vehicle
interaction. Our testbed also facilitates logging and capturing of the data in
the real time that can be played back to examine particular scenarios or use
cases, and for regression testing. As part of the demonstration of feasibility,
we present a brief description of the CAT Vehicle Challenge, in which student
researchers from all over the globe were able to reproduce their simulation
results with fewer than 2 days of interfacing with the physical platform.
