An Earth Rover dataset recorded at the ICRA@40 party

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new real-world dataset recorded by an Earth Rover in Rotterdam, aimed at advancing open-world autonomous navigation research in challenging urban environments.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel dataset captured in Rotterdam for the Earth Rover Challenge, filling a gap in open-world navigation datasets in the Netherlands.

Findings

Dataset includes diverse urban navigation scenarios

Provides valuable real-world data for autonomous navigation research

Supports development of robust open-world navigation models

Abstract

The ICRA conference is celebrating its $40^{th}$ anniversary in Rotterdam in September 2024, with as highlight the Happy Birthday ICRA Party at the iconic Holland America Line Cruise Terminal. One month later the IROS conference will take place, which will include the Earth Rover Challenge. In this challenge open-world autonomous navigation models are studied truly open-world settings. As part of the Earth Rover Challenge several real-world navigation sets in several cities world-wide, like Auckland, Australia and Wuhan, China. The only dataset recorded in the Netherlands is the small village Oudewater. The proposal is to record a dataset with the robot used in the Earth Rover Challenge in Rotterdam, in front of the Holland America Line Cruise Terminal, before the festivities of the Happy Birthday ICRA Party start. See: https://github.com/SlamMate/vSLAM-on-FrodoBots-2K