Application Story

ASAM OpenSCENARIO provides a solution space for describing and executing the dynamic content of driving and traffic situations. In both areas, development and Validation, the Simulation domain needs machine readable reproducible descriptions of maneuvers connecting to complex external systems like sensor models, driver models and road network models. ASAM standards such as ASAM OSI or ASAM OpenDRIVE cover these systems and share common concepts with ASAM OpenSCENARIO such as road coordinate system or the description of traffic participants.

Published in early 2020, the ASAM OpenSCENARIO 1.0 Standard offers a detailed Data Model and an exchange format (XML) for the shared use of driving and traffic situations. Various Simulation environments have already implemented ASAM OpenSCENARIO (e.g esmini [5]).

OEMs and tool vendors have started a broad initiative to develop tools and to use ASAM OpenSCENARIO as an abstract shared language to describe maneuvers for development and Homologation. For example, in automated lane keeping systems (ALKS).

To create a common basis for the development, RA Consulting has initiated the open source project OpenSCENARIO API [1]. It defines a completely Standard-compliant software API for reading, writing and checking scenarios. It is available in C++ and in Java and is published under Apache 2.0 license. The library offers both an integrable API and a checker framework. This extension point allows the definition of customer specific validations.

RA Consulting ‘s portfolio includes automotive products such as DiagRA MCD Toolset and ODX Viewer. Their customers benefit from professional components such as A2L library, ODX API and MCD3 toolset, all implementing ASAM standards. RA Consulting‘s expertise in the areas of software architecture, development and data modelling was used when founding and creating the OpenSCENARIO API project.

The OpenSCENARIO API was created fully compliant to the ASAM OpenSCENARIO Standard 1.0. It offers the following features:

• Standalone checker: An executable checker gives precise warnings and errors regarding a row- and column-based file location.
• Browsing and editing. An API for browsing through a scenario tree and editing list objects. It is ready to be integrated in editors, simulators, comparators and other tools.

This includes aspects that go far beyond simple XML Schema Validation:

• Resolving $-notated parameters.
• Resolving catalogue references.
• Resolving object references.
• Checking model constraints from the standard (range checker rules).

Architectural features:

• Abstracting from storage media:
  Read from archive files, from databases or from the cloud by writing your own resource locator classes.
• Abstracting from storage formats:
  Write your own loader class to read from binary files, from JSON files, etc.
• Checker rule API:
  Write your own checker rules. E.g. deduced from the authoring guidelines of your company.

The open source project OpenSCENARIO API [1] provides complete source code (C++, Java) and instructions how to build the software components on different operating systems and platforms. Tutorials on how to use the standalone checker and how to integrate the library are provided.

• A standalone checker that validates business rules far beyond simple schema validation. Like checking catalogue references, resolving $-notated parameters or checking user defined rules.
• A sophisticated and standard compliant software library to read, to write and to validate ASAM OpenSCENARIO 1.0 files. Distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and ready to be used.
• Various extension points to read from archive-files, or from cloud applications, or to store scenarios in databases and binary files.
• A lively community of ASAM OpenSCENARIO users. Authors, developers, simulation engineers.