The ‘Engineering Team of the Year’ award at the ‘ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International Award’ goes to MAN Truck & Bus. The jury of internationally renowned experts honoured an MAN development team for the release of a data set containing 747 scenes from test drives on public roads. On the basis of these so-called ‘TruckScenes’, researchers from all over the world can advance the autonomous driving of commercial vehicles more quickly. The development team from Munich accepted the prestigious award at the ‘ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Technology Expo’ in Stuttgart.
‘This data release promotes the standardisation of data formats between manufacturers, universities and software developers. It also enables a standardised comparison of results and methods of scientific studies and simplifies collaboration with external development partners’, says Anthony James, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine ‘ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International’, which awards the prize.
Base for autonomous trucks
The development of autonomous driving requires a large amount of training data. This enables automation systems to learn how to steer trucks safely through traffic. This is precisely where the ‘MAN TruckScenes’ data set comes into play: it includes scenes from real road traffic, primarily from German motorways, the associated feeder routes and freight terminals. The data is typical for hub-to-hub transport – i.e. transport between logistics hubs. MAN sees this as an initial application scenario for driverless lorry driving on long-distance routes. The data comes from test vehicles equipped with four cameras, six lidar and six radar systems as well as two inertial measurement units for determining the position in space (IMS) and navigation satellites.
Numerous downloads
The ‘MAN TruckScenes’ have been well received by developers of autonomous vehicles from all over the world. Since its publication, the download figures for the data set, which comprises several hundred gigabytes, have been rising continuously. No wonder: never before has a truck manufacturer made such data recordings freely accessible. In addition, similar data records from passenger car development are of little help in the truck sector – because trucks drive in different environments than passenger cars, usually have an additional trailer, require more sensors and, due to their long braking distance, must also be able to ‘see’ much further ahead.
‘We are very proud of this award, because it confirms that we are on the right track with our automation approach,’ says Dr Frederik Zohm, Chief Research and Development Officer at MAN. ‘At the same time, we also know that we can only bring this huge technological step onto the road together with partners. For this reason, we are publishing our data so that others can also benefit from it. This benefits us all – and advances this important innovation in Germany and Europe.’
Autonomous driving at MAN
MAN is driving autonomous driving forward with various research and development projects. The focus is on autonomous driving between logistics hubs on motorways and motorways, as has been made possible in principle by German legislation since 2021. In 2024, MAN was the first commercial vehicle manufacturer to drive an autonomous prototype on the motorway.
SOURCE: MAN Truck & Bus
