2.2.3.4 Traffic participant

A traffic participant is an element of the simulated world and can change its state during simulation time, for example, its position and orientation. A traffic participant represents one of the following:

Pedestrians and animals are examples of traffic participants that are living beings. Vehicles are examples of traffic participants that are a means of transportation. The ego vehicle is therefore also a traffic participant.

The following figure shows the interface of a traffic participant.

Traffic participant models may use other OSI interfaces, for example, the SensorData and MotionRequest message, internally. The following figure shows a more advanced use case for traffic participants, that can, for example, be used to model an autonomous vehicle.

With every simulation step, an OSI traffic participant model receives ground-truth data from the environment around itself, the sensor view. A traffic participant can output its own perceivable state, the traffic update. Traffic commands influence the behavior of the traffic participant model. They allow event-based communication towards the traffic participant, that is, at certain simulation steps. Traffic commands do not necessarily need to come from the environment simulation. They may come from a separate source, such as a scenario engine.