Luminar Technologies, Inc., an automotive LiDAR hardware and software technology provider, and Volvo Cars, has released a curated LiDAR dataset called Cirrus containing unique long-range data from Volvo Cars’ test and data collection fleet. This curated dataset is being opened to industry developers and researchers in order to aid and further advancements for safe self-driving.
Cirrus features raw data from Luminar’s high-performance LiDAR sensors, which accurately detect objects ahead of the car out to 250 meters away. The LiDAR dataset is intended to help advance research and refinement of self-driving software algorithms, in the interest of improved vehicle safety at highway speeds and in complex environments. Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering has also been contributing effort to the project.
To date, LiDAR research has relied on shorter range, lower resolution point clouds, and uniform scanning patterns in public datasets. Luminar also has the unique capability of dynamically adjusting its scan pattern for optimized resolution up to 5x standard uniform distribution. This is reflected in the dataset, which also includes uniform LiDAR data and corresponding camera images, and annotations for reference.
“Making this substantial dataset publicly available with Volvo Cars represents another significant step towards the development of safe and ubiquitous autonomous vehicles,” said Christoph Schroeder, Vice President of software, Luminar. “Luminar and Volvo Cars are aligned in the belief that sharing knowledge and research will contribute to safer roads for everyone. Our dataset uses non-uniform gaussian scanning patterns, giving developers extremely high-quality information to help build more advanced autonomous capabilities.”
The Cirrus LiDAR dataset is being released as part of the new Volvo Cars Innovation Portal, which makes a broad variety of resources and tools available for free, allowing external developers to create new innovative services and in-car apps.
“By making these resources publicly available, we support developers in and outside our company, and collaborate with the best of the best in their fields,” said Henrik Green, Chief Technology Officer, Volvo Cars.
