Creating OpenCRG road surface model from terrestrial laser scanning data for autonomous vehicles

Abstract

The OpenCRG road surface model as part of an open available data format is originally designed for simulation purposes, where the micro level information about the road surface is stored in this format. The paper introduces the whole open data format family (OpenDRIVE, OpenCRG and OpenSCENARIO) and then demonstrates that an efficient road surveying technology, namely the terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is excellent data source to create realistic description about the road surface. The TLS captured point cloud stores very fine details about the surface, including height irregularities, potholes, cracks, manholes. Because the consortium being behind the developers contain car manufacturers (e.g. Daimler, BMW), mapping agencies (e.g. Here) and technology companies (e.g. Fraunhofer), the usage of the OpenCRG format is expected not only in laboratory circumstances, but later in real life applications. Autonomous vehicles have extreme requests for detailed information about the road and its neighborhood, and the developed open format seems to have excellent support to self-driving vehicle control.