Doppelgänger Test Generation for Revealing Bugs in Autonomous Driving Software

Vehicles controlled by autonomous driving software (ADS) are expected to bring many social and economic benefits, but at the current stage not being broadly used due to concerns with regard to their safety. Virtual tests, where autonomous vehicles are tested in software simulation, are common practices because they are more efficient and safer compared to field operational tests. Specifically, search-based approaches are used to find particularly critical situations. These approaches provide an opportunity to automatically generate tests; however, system-atically producing bug-revealing tests for ADS remains a major challenge. To address this challenge, we introduce DoppelTest, a test generation approach for ADSes that utilizes a genetic algorithm to discover bug-revealing violations by generating scenarios with multiple autonomous vehicles that account for traffic control (e.g., traffic signals and stop signs). Our extensive evaluation shows that DoppelTest can efficiently discover 123 bug-revealing violations for a production-grade ADS (Baidu Apollo) which we then classify into 8 unique bug categories.