WayWiseR: A Rapid Prototyping Platform for Validating Connected and Automated Vehicles

Validating connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), specifically Automated Driving Systems (ADS), remains a challenge, particularly in ensuring safety and reliability across diverse operational scenarios. Before an ADS can be considered safe for deployment, it must be evaluated across a wide range of carefully designed test cases that capture both expected and edge case conditions. As recognized in the UNECE’s New Assessment/Test Method for Automated Driving (NATM), testing all such scenarios on a real system is often impractical, making virtual testing an essential complement to physical tests. To enable this, we present WayWiseR, an open-source rapid prototyping platform built on ROS2 that supports researchers in developing and evaluating validation methodologies for CAVs. By integrating modular components, simulation environments such as CARLA, and scaled vehicle hardware, WayWiseR enables reproducible experimentation and flexible orchestration of test scenarios across both virtual and physical platforms. We demonstrate the platform through two representative use cases: autonomous reverse docking in a logistics hub, and human detection and emergency braking in forestry environments. The results demonstrate WayWiseR’s ability to bridge simulation-based validation with real-world operational testing, thereby supporting the safer deployment of sufficiently validated CAVs.