OSDaR-AR: Enhancing Railway Perception Datasets via Multi-modal Augmented Reality

TL;DR

This paper presents a multi-modal augmented reality framework that integrates photorealistic virtual objects into real railway scenes to enhance perception datasets, addressing the sim-to-real gap with improved realism and temporal coherence.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel AR pipeline using Unreal Engine 5 and sensor data to create realistic augmented railway datasets, including a new public dataset OSDaR-AR.

Findings

Enhanced realism of augmented sequences confirmed by comparative study

Improved temporal stability of virtual objects in railway scenes

OSDaR-AR dataset supports development of advanced railway perception systems

Abstract

Although deep learning has significantly advanced the perception capabilities of intelligent transportation systems, railway applications continue to suffer from a scarcity of high-quality, annotated data for safety-critical tasks like obstacle detection. While photorealistic simulators offer a solution, they often struggle with the ``sim-to-real" gap; conversely, simple image-masking techniques lack the spatio-temporal coherence required to obtain augmented single- and multi-frame scenes with the correct appearance and dimensions. This paper introduces a multi-modal augmented reality framework designed to bridge this gap by integrating photorealistic virtual objects into real-world railway sequences from the OSDaR23 dataset. Utilizing Unreal Engine 5 features, our pipeline leverages LiDAR point-clouds and INS/GNSS data to ensure accurate object placement and temporal stability across RGB frames. This paper also proposes a segmentation-based refinement strategy for INS/GNSS data to significantly improve the realism of the augmented sequences, as confirmed by the comparative study presented in the paper. Carefully designed augmented sequences are collected to produce OSDaR-AR, a public dataset designed to support the development of next-generation railway perception systems. The dataset is available at the following page: https://syndra.retis.santannapisa.it/osdarar.html