RadaRays: Real-Time Simulation of Rotating FMCW Radar for Mobile Robotics via Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing
2025 (English)In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, E-ISSN 2377-3766, Vol. 10, no 3, p. 2470-2477Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
RadaRays allows for the accurate modeling and simulation of rotating FMCW radar sensors in complex environments, including the simulation of reflection, refraction, and scattering of radar waves. Our software is able to handle large numbers of objects and materials in real-time, making it suitable for use in a variety of mobile robotics applications. We demonstrate the effectiveness of RadaRays through a series of experiments and show that it can more accurately reproduce the behavior of FMCW radar sensors in a variety of environments, compared to the ray casting-based lidar-like simulations that are commonly used in simulators for autonomous driving such as CARLA. Our experiments additionally serve as a valuable reference point for researchers to evaluate their own radar simulations. By using RadaRays, developers can significantly reduce the time and cost associated with prototyping and testing FMCW radar-based algorithms. We also provide a Gazebo plugin that makes our work accessible to the mobile robotics community.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IEEE, 2025. Vol. 10, no 3, p. 2470-2477
Keywords [en]
Radar, Radar imaging, Robots, Spaceborne radar, Ray tracing, Meteorological radar, Real-time systems, Radar scattering, Radar antennas, Radar cross-sections, Simulation and animation, range sensing, software tools for robot programming, SLAM, collision avoidance
National Category
Robotics and automation Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-119270DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2025.3531689ISI: 001411912800005Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85216089114OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-119270DiVA, id: diva2:1938002
Note
This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and in part by the VolkswagenStiftung through DFKI Niedersachsen (DFKI NI).
2025-02-172025-02-172025-02-17Bibliographically approved