The industry’s most extended range and highest resolution dataset are launched with Volvo Cars’ Innovation Portal, as the companies continue to execute to series production.
Luminar Technologies, Inc, a global supplier of automotive lidar hardware and software technology, and Volvo Cars today released a curated dataset called Cirrus containing unique long-range lidar data from Volvo Cars’ test and data collection fleet. Luminar and Volvo will offer the curated dataset to industry developers and researchers to aid and further develop 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. By offering the dataset, the collaboration will help engineers advance research and refinement of self-driving software algorithms, in the interest of improved vehicle safety at highway speeds and complex environments. Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering has also been contributing effort to the project.
To date, lidar research has relied on the 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.
“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 at 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 dataset is being released as part of the new Volvo Cars Innovation Portal, making a wide variety of resources and tools available for free, allowing external developers to create 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 at Volvo Cars.
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