Synthetic data generation for the continuous development and testing of autonomous construction machinery

Abstract

Abstract The development and testing of autonomous systems require sufficient meaningful data. However, generating suitable scenario data is a challenging task. In particular, it raises the question of how to narrow down what kind of data should be considered meaningful. Autonomous systems are characterized by their ability to cope with uncertain situations, i.e. complex and unknown environmental conditions. Due to this openness, the definition of training and test scenarios cannot be easily specified. Not all relevant influences can be sufficiently specified with requirements in advance, especially for unknown scenarios and corner cases, and therefore the “right” data, balancing quality and efficiency, is hard to generate. This article discusses the challenges of automated generation of 3D scenario data. We present a training and testing loop that provides a way to generate synthetic camera and Lidar data using 3D simulated environments. Those can be automatically varied and modified to support a closed-loop system for deriving and generating datasets that can be used for continuous development and testing of autonomous systems.