Trailer support

In current (1.2) version there is no way to define linked vehicles, e.g. trailer behind a car or semi-trailer trucks. In particular large trucks are needed for many safety critical scenarios.

Describe the solution you would like

By providing mechanism to link vehicles any configurations can be achieved. Brief draft description

Describe alternatives you have considered

The first idea was to introduce linked vehicles as single entities, e.g. car+trailer, semi-truck (with one trailer) and semi-truck-with-extra-trailer. But since details about link points and bounding boxes are needed for collision and sensor simulation it would probably be very complicated and yet limited to specified configurations.

Describe the backwards compatibility

By just adding elements to the Vehicle class, not changing or removing any previous elements, backward compatibility is preserved. Not sure about OSI, but the assumption is that since linked vehicles are represented as individual entities it should be no problem. The only potential limitation is that the relation is not explicitly represented.

Additional context

Concept according to above proposal has been implemented in esmini v2.21.0. For more info and a few video clips, see corresponding release notes.

Edited Mar 15, 2022 by Emil KNABE (Volvo Cars)