Measuring Sensor Weather Influence
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Weather Performance
Quantifying the influence of environmental conditions
Perception sensors are exposed to all kinds of adverse environmental conditions like rain, snow, or fog. Especially for optical sensors, like camera and lidar, the influences on the signal propagation lead to range degradation and false positive detections. These influences need to be measured and validated.
Real World Weather Measurements
Our weather test bench is equipped with precision reference sensors measuring environment parameters like visibility, brightness, precipitation drop size and speed, temperature, wind speed and direction, etc. We measure year-round in various real conditions. Multiple camera, lidar and radar sensors can be mounted on the test bench.
Calibrated Reference Targets
In the sensors’ field of view, various stationary targets with different calibrated reflectivities are located. Additionally, common road signs are placed in the target area. Custom targets can additionally be placed for your campaign. We analyze the weather effects in the sensor data and consider these effects in simulation.
Fully Automated Recordings
The measurements are fully automated. When defined thresholds of weather conditions are passed, the station automatically starts recording the perception sensor data alongside the data from the reference sensors. The video shows a measurement of patchy fog.
Measure Rare Conditions
The weather test bench measures real world weather conditions including phenomena that cannot be recreated in weather chambers. This includes snow, but also the hail storm you see in the video. While you might come across this by chance in field testing, you will not have accurate reference data and a reproducible target setup. This is only possible on our weather test bench.
Performance Curves by Data Aggregation
Hundreds of measurements are aggregated per weather condition over the course of multiple months during one measurement campaign. Based on all measurements, performance curves are derived for each sensor in each weather condition focusing on target detection as well as false-positive scatter points in the atmosphere. Camera images are analyzed with regard to contrasts, target intensities, variance and SNR.
