Autonomous trucks, for the very first time MAN publishes open source sensor and driving data
The data set now published by MAN primarily maps driving operations on German highways and associated feeder routes as well as driving operations in terminal environments. This covers the demand for so-called hub-to-hub transportation between logistics hubs, on which MAN is focusing as an application scenario for driverless driving.
MAN is one of the truck manufacturers currently working on the development of autonomous vehicles. The German company is involved in some very significant projects on an European scale. The target is to generate, collect and analyze useful data coming from the practical use of the vehicle. Now, MAN is the first truck manufacturer to publish a 747-scene set of sensor and vehicle data from development drives for autonomous driving.
These data are made available to different players, such as manufacturers, universities and software developers, who are working independently of each other on automated driving. This also enables a standardized comparison of results and methods as a reference for scientific studies and simplifies collaboration with external development partners.
The data set now published by MAN primarily maps driving operations on German highways and associated feeder routes as well as driving operations in terminal environments. This covers the demand for so-called hub-to-hub transportation between logistics hubs, on which MAN is focusing as an application scenario for driverless driving. More into details, the sensor set consists of data from four cameras, six lidars, six radars, two inertial measurement units for determining the position in surrounding space (IMS) and high-precision global navigation satellite system (GNSS) data.
MAN’s efforts on autonomous truck development: the projects
As we said earlier, MAN is driving autonomous driving forward with various research and development projects. From 2018 to 2020, MAN developed and tested a driverless truck in container handling on the premises of the Port of Hamburg in a joint research and development project with Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG. From 2019 to 2023, the ANITA project with partners Deutsche Bahn, Fresenius University of Applied Sciences and Götting KG focused on the complete digital integration of an autonomous truck into the logistics process of container handling from road to rail. And since 2022, MAN has been working with eleven partners in the ATLAS-L4 funding project to develop an autonomous truck for use in highway transport between logistics hubs.
