Abstract
In recent years, automated vehicles have garnered attention in the multidisciplinary research field, promising increased safety on the road and new opportunities for passengers. High-Definition (HD) maps have been in development for many years as they offer roadmaps with inch-perfect accuracy and high environmental fidelity, containing precise information about pedestrian crossings, traffic lights/signs, barriers, and more. Demonstrating autonomous driving requires verification of driving on actual roads, but this can be challenging, time-consuming, and costly. To overcome these obstacles, creating HD maps of real roads in a simulation and conducting virtual driving has become an alternative solution. However, existing HD maps using high-precision data are expensive and time-consuming to build, which limits their verification in various environments and on different roads. Thus, it is challenging to demonstrate autonomous driving on anything other than extremely limited roads and environments. In this paper, we propose a new and simple method for implementing HD maps that are more accessible for autonomous driving demonstrations. Our HD map combines the CARLA simulator and OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, which are both open-source, allowing for the creation of HD maps containing high-accuracy road information globally with minimal dependence. Our results show that our easily accessible HD map has an accuracy of 98.28% for longitudinal length on straight roads and 98.42% on curved roads. Moreover, the accuracy for the lateral direction for the road width represented 100% compared to the manual method reflected with the exact road data. The proposed method can contribute to the advancement of autonomous driving and enable its demonstration in diverse environments and on various roads.