RealSim CARLA documentation

Table of Contents

CARLA Windows Build
Simulation Setups
SUMO Traffic Lights Replication in CARLA
Current Support of Co-Simulation Forms
Helper Scripts
Run Simulation

Carla Windows Build

Please visit Visual Studio Installer Download to download the Visual Studio Installer

To build the CARLA 0.9.15 under Visual Studio 2019, a practical guide is shown below (For detailed build steps, please refer to CARLA Windows Build Guide.):

The MSVC toolset version changed to v142 after Visual Studio 2019. Since the official installation script supports MSVC 142, we use Visual Studio 2019 for simplicity.

The documentation for building CARLA on windows can be found Carla Windows Build. Please note that, we need to use “X64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019” for compilation.

Remember to follow every steps in the CARLA Windows build documentation.

If you don’t need to use the source version CARLA as the server. You dont need to compile the Carla Server follwing the documentation. You can just run:

make LibCarla GENERATOR="Visual Studio 2019" TOOLSET="msvc-14.2"

which will provide the necessary dependencies for the FIXS-CARLA

Once the build is finished, copy the directory ${CARLA_Root}\PythonAPI\carla\dependencies\ into the ${FIXS_Root}\CommonLib\ and rename the directory as libcarla.

Then you can build the VirCarlaEnv, note that only the Release version is supported.

Simulation Setups

#pragma once
# Global Simulation setup
SimulationSetup:
    # Master Switch to turn on/off RealSim interface
    # if turned off, VISSIM will just run without RealSim
    # SUMO needs to run without traci
  EnableRealSim: true

    # Whether or not to save verbose log during the simulation. skip log can potentially speed up
  EnableVerboseLog: false

    # Simulation end time
    # if NOT specificed, SimulationEndTime will be set to a large value (90000 seconds)
    #--------------------------------------------------
  SimulationEndTime: 250

    # specify which traffic simulator
    #--------------------------------------------------
  SelectedTrafficSimulator: "SUMO"

    # default will send all
  VehicleMessageField: [id, type, vehicleClass, speed, acceleration, positionX, positionY, positionZ, heading,
    color, linkId, laneId, distanceTravel, speedDesired, grade, length, width, height]

    # by default it is false 
  EnableExternalDynamics: true   # use this so that simulink will control the response

  TrafficSimulatorIP: "127.0.0.1"
  TrafficSimulatorPort: 1337
SumoSetup:
    # set the speed mode, in integer. default value is 0
    # check Sumo documentation https://sumo.dlr.de/docs/TraCI/Change_Vehicle_State.html#speed_mode_0xb3

  SpeedMode: 32   # 31: default mode. 32: all checks off

# setup Application Layer
ApplicationSetup:
    # turn on/off application layer
  EnableApplicationLayer: true

    #--------------------------------------------------
  VehicleSubscription:
    # Application from where to accept the vehicle data
    # 1. Receive data from FIXS LAYER
    # 2. Send data to XIL LAYER / Back to FIXS LAYER
  - type: "ego"
    attribute: {id: ["ego"], radius: [50]}
    ip: ["127.0.0.1"]
    port: [440]


  SignalSubscription:
  - type: intersection
    attribute: {name: ['111', '139', '156', '167', '184']}
    ip: ['127.0.0.1']
    port: [440]
    
XilSetup:
    # enable/disable XIL
  EnableXil: false

CarlaSetup:
    
    # whether or not enable Carla (default: false)
    EnableCosimulation: true
    
	EnableVerboseLog: false
    # whether or not enable external control
    # if set to true, the sumo vehicles will be updated according to the carla vehicles' state
    # if set to false, the carla will be only visualizing the sumo vehicles
    EnableExternalControl: false
    
    # whether or not use vehicle type as blueprint  
    # if set to true, the carla vehicles will be created according to the vehicle type
    # if set to false, the carla vehicles will be spawned using random blueprint
    UseVehicleTypeAsBlueprint: true

    # Carla Server Ip and Port settings 
    CarlaServerIP: 127.0.0.1
    CarlaServerPort: 2000

    # Carla Client Ip and Port settings 
    CarlaClientIP: 127.0.0.1
    CarlaClientPort: 440

    # default Traffic Objects updates every 0.1 seconds
    TrafficRefreshRate: 0.1
    
    # Interested ids should be a subset of the vehicleSubscription ids
    InterestedIds: ["ego"]

    # center view at vehicle, the vehicle id should be a subset of the interested ids
    CenteredViewId: "ego"

SUMO Traffic Lights Replication in CARLA

Derive Traffic Lights Table

The traffic light extraction script is located at ${FIXS_Root}\tests\SumoCarla\utils\extract_sumo_tls_as_table.py. By specifying the sumo traffic network paths, it will generate the TLS table traffic_light_table.csv at the specified destination.

Or you can run the ${FIXS_Root}\tests\SumoCarla\setup_env.py.

Place Traffic Lights

To replicate the traffic lights in CARLA defined in the TLS table, we need to first open the CARLA map on which the traffic lights will be placed. Then specify the TLS table path TLS_TABLE_PATH in the TLS placing script at {FIXS_Root}\tests\SumoCarla\unreal_scripts\placing_tls.py. Use the CARLA Unreal Engine Python plug-in to run the script (Execute Python Script through Unreal as shown below). Click File and find the Python section. To enable the Python Plugin, please refer to Scripting the Editor using Python.

Note that to change the blueprint of the traffic light, please modify the TRAFFICLIGHT_HEAD_BLUEPRINT_PATH.

Current Support of Co-Simulation Forms

SUMO Controls All Vehicles

If all the vehicles are controlled by SUMO, then EnableExternalControl should be set to false. Control commands sent to the CARLA world will not be applied to SUMO vehicles, or to CARLA vehicles, since all CARLA vehicles will follow the states from SUMO.

Control Vehicles Externally through CARLA API

Setting EnableExternalControl to true enables vehicles to be controlled externally in the CARLA world. Another CARLA client can modify vehicle states and these changes will be reflected in SUMO.

If the vehicle is already defined in SUMO, it will be spawned and moved to the SUMO location.
If not, the vehicle will be spawned using its CARLA location.

Control Vehicles Externally through FIXS

Partially Implemented.

Helper Scripts

Disable Synchronous Mode

Running VirCarlaENV sets the CARLA server to synchronous mode, which causes stopping the CARLA server directly to freeze. If you want to stop the simulation before it ends, synchronous mode should be disabled. A helper script to do this is located at:

${FIXS_Root}\tests\SumoCarla\carla_scripts\disable_carla_synchronous_mode.py

Run Simulation

To run the simulation, we need to run at least three components:

CARLA Server
SUMO
FIXS-Core (Traffic Layer)

For the “SUMO Controls All Vehicles” use case, there is an automatic script located at:

{FIXS_Root}\tests\SumoCarla\unreal_scripts\run_sumo_carla.py

, which runs the SUMO, FIXS-Core and FIXS-CARLA.

The CARLA Server should be manually started before running the script.

For the “Control Vehicles Externally through CARLA API” use case, an example could be a vehicle manually controlled using the CARLA API. A manual control script is located at:

{FIXS_Root}\tests\SumoCarla\carla_scripts\mannual_control.py

After starting the server, run the manual control script and then the automatic script.