Task-specific performance evaluation of UGVs: Case studies at the IVFC

Performance evaluation is considered as an important part of the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) development; it helps to discover research problems and improves driving safety. In this paper, a task-specific performance evaluation model of UGVs applied in the Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge (IVFC) annual competitions is discussed. It is defined in functional levels with a formal evaluation process, including metrics analysis, metrics preprocessing, weights calculation, and a technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methods. IVFC 2012 is selected as a case study and overall performances of five UGVs are evaluated with specific analyzed autonomous driving tasks of environment perception, structural on-road driving, unstructured zone driving, and dynamic path planning. The model is proved to be helpful in IVFC serial competition UGVs performance evaluation.