Automotive lidar supplier Luminar Technologies and Volvo Cars have released a curated data set called Cirrus which contains long-range lidar data from Volvo’s test and data collection fleet. The data set is being opened to industry developers.
The companies state that Cirrus features raw data from Luminar’s lidar sensors, said to be capable of detecting objects up to 250m away. They explain that the data set 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.
Luminar notes that its lidar systems have the capability of dynamically adjusting their scan pattern for optimized resolution up to five times standard uniform distribution. This is reflected in the data set, which also includes uniform lidar data and corresponding camera images, along with annotations for reference.
Christoph Schroeder, vice president of software at Luminar, remarked, “Making this substantial data set publicly available with Volvo Cars represents another significant step toward the development of safe and ubiquitous autonomous vehicles. 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 data set 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.