MAN Truck & Bus has released a comprehensive dataset called “MAN TruckScenes,” making it the first truck manufacturer to publicly share such detailed sensor and vehicle data from autonomous driving development trials. The dataset includes 747 driving scenarios captured during development drives, aimed at promoting collaboration and innovation in autonomous truck technology.
The dataset primarily focuses on driving operations along German highways, connecting routes, and terminal environments, supporting the development of autonomous “hub-to-hub” transportation systems. Key components of the sensor set include:
- Four cameras, six lidars, and six radars
- Two inertial measurement units (IMS) for spatial positioning
- High-precision GNSS data
- 360° 4D radar coverage, representing the largest radar data set of its kind with annotated 3D bounding boxes
“We are taking the lead to fill this gap,” said Dr. Frederik Zohm, Head of Research and Development at MAN Truck & Bus. “In the passenger car sector, numerous publicly available datasets already exist. However, this was not the case for trucks. Datasets like MAN TruckScenes are an important resource for data-driven development.”
The collected scenes cover varied weather conditions and are categorized into training, testing, and validation sets. The accompanying annotations detail driving conditions and object markings to aid in machine learning for neural network development.
MAN stated that publicly available datasets promote “standardised evaluation of the performance and quality of environmental recognition for the fulfilment of the driving task”. The company emphasised that such datasets also facilitate collaboration with external partners and the continuous improvement of environmental recognition performance.
Ongoing autonomous development projects
MAN’s efforts in autonomous trucking have involved multiple partnerships and projects, including:
- Port of Hamburg Trials (2018-2020): Testing a driverless truck in container handling.
- ANITA Project (2019-2023): Collaboration with Deutsche Bahn and others for digital integration of autonomous trucks in logistics.
- ATLAS-L4 Project (2022-2025): Development of autonomous trucks for highway transport with technical supervision, aligning with Germany’s 2021 autonomous driving law.
Practical test drives with a safety driver are planned for 2025, with series production of autonomous trucks targeted by the decade’s end.
The “MAN TruckScenes” dataset is freely accessible for research and development at MAN TruckScenes website.