In this paper we present The Oxford Radar Robot-Car Dataset, a new dataset for researching scene understanding using Millimetre-Wave FMCW scanning radar data. The target application is autonomous vehicles where this modality remains unencumbered by environmental conditions such as fog, rain, snow, or lens flare, which typically challenge other sensor modalities such as vision and LIDAR.The data were gathered in January 2019 over thirty-two traversals of a central Oxford route spanning a total of 280 km of urban driving. It encompasses a variety of weather, traffic, and lighting conditions. This 4.7 TB dataset consists of over 240.000 scans from a Navtech CTS350-X radar and 2.4 million scans from two Velodyne HDL-32E 3D LIDARs; along with six cameras, two 2D LIDARs, and a GPS/INS receiver. In addition we release ground truth optimised radar odometry to provide an additional impetus to research in this domain. The full dataset is available for download at: ori.ox.ac.uk/datasets/radar-robotcar-dataset
In recent years the range of robotics platforms available for research and development has increased dramatically. Despite this there are areas and applications which are not currently well served by the existing available platforms. Many of them are designed for indoor use; the range of outdoor and off-road robotics platforms is less diverse and few address the issue of deployment in hazardous weather conditions and integrate a suitable sensor suite. In addition almost all of the commercially available Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) are unsuitable for deployment on delicate surfaces. Given the widespread use of manicured grass within the built environment and agriculture across the western world, this severely limits where they can be deployed and the tasks that can be accomplished. This paper introduces the design principles of a suitable autonomous vehicle. Hulk is built from a commercial zero-turn mower modified for fly-by-wire operation and equipped with a full sensor suite and computing payload. To enable remote, long-term autonomy in diverse environments, several layers of redundant safety systems were designed and installed and the entire assembly made weatherproof.
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