This paper reports on the challenges encountered and lessons learned during the development and deployment of a flexible multi-sensor platform for autonomous driving research. It aims to serve as a reference for researchers developing new multi-sensor systems. As the need for reliable, diverse datasets increases, novel environments and sensing configurations are essential to tackle real-world operational challenges. Consequently, many research groups create custom multi-sensory data collection platforms, where fundamental issues, such as mechanical design, sensor calibration, power management, and time synchronization, arise regardless of sensor types. We reflect on these challenges and share key insights to guide future platform designs, enhancing reproducibility and robustness in autonomous vehicle testing. We also summarize the mitigation strategies we adopted, for instance, system-wide time synchronization using GNSS timing and NTP protocols, custom calibration routines for different sensor configurations, and design practices to improve reliability and data integrity during field deployments.
Figures & tables
Fig. 1: Evolution of the NavINST experimental setup over time.
Fig. 2: Digital twin of the 2023 experimental setup.
Fig. 3: Calibration of some extrinsic transformations using a camera tracking system by Vicon. Reflective markers were mounted on the sensors to enable precise calibration.
Fig. 4: Carrier-to-noise ratio under interferences.
Advancing autonomy for surface vessels requires systematic evaluation of their sensing and perception subsystems. Yet, maritime environments impose unique challenges: sensor installation is constrained by vessel layout, environmental conditions such as fog or sea clutter are difficult to reproduce, and long-duration missions complicate data collection. This work addresses the question: How can we design a modular and reproducible sensor platform for maritime autonomy? We present a comprehensive design blueprint that incorporates diverse modalities - RADAR, LiDAR, IMU, GNSS, AIS, RGB and LWIR cameras, and weather sensors - to enhance environmental awareness and vessel proprioception. Supported by a dedicated ROS2-based software framework for data management, our modular platform enables long-term data collection, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and integration with existing sensors and algorithms. By unifying hardware design and data capture methodology, the platform enhances reproducibility and comparability across vessels and research projects. The proposed framework bridges engineering implementation and research methodology, providing the foundation for standardized, verifiable datasets essential to advancing situational awareness and autonomous maritime navigation.
Jonathan E. Schmidt, Julius Wirbel, P. Nicholas Hansen +4
Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
The Boreas Road Trip (Boreas-RT) dataset extends the multi-season Boreas dataset to new and diverse locations that pose challenges for modern autonomous driving algorithms. Boreas-RT comprises 60 sequences collected over 9 real-world routes, totalling 643 km of driving. Each route is traversed multiple times, enabling evaluation in identical environments under varying traffic and, in some cases, weather conditions. The data collection platform includes a 5MP FLIR Blackfly S camera, a 360 degree Navtech RAS6 Doppler-enabled spinning radar, a 128-channel 360 degree Velodyne Alpha Prime lidar, an Aeva Aeries II FMCW Doppler-enabled lidar, a Silicon Sensing DMU41 inertial measurement unit, and a Dynapar wheel encoder. Centimetre-level ground truth is provided via post-processed Applanix POS LV GNSS-INS data. The dataset includes precise extrinsic and intrinsic calibrations, a publicly available development kit, and a live leaderboard for odometry and metric localization. Benchmark results show that many state-of-the-art odometry and localization algorithms overfit to simple driving environments and degrade significantly on the more challenging Boreas-RT routes. Boreas-RT provides a unified dataset for evaluating multi-modal algorithms across diverse road conditions. The dataset, leaderboard, and development kit are available at www.boreas.utias.utoronto.ca.
Daniil Lisus, Katya M. Papais, Cedric Le Gentil +4
University of Toronto Institute of Aerospace Studies, Toronto, Canada · Trimble, Canada
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) increasingly rely on vision-based perception and learning-based control, necessitating experimental platforms that support realistic hardware-in-the-loop validation. Small-scale platforms for autonomous racing offer a practical path to hardware validation, but often suffer from limited modularity, high integration complexity, or restricted extensibility. This paper presents TEACAR, a 1/14- to 1/16-scale autonomous driving platform designed with modular mechanical architecture, hardware abstraction, and ROS 2-based software. The system adopts a four-layer deck structure that physically decouples sensing, computation, actuation, and power subsystems, improving structural rigidity while simplifying reconfiguration. We constructed and comprehensively evaluated the prototype of TEACAR. Its mechanical stability, structural characteristics, and software performance were quantified based on three CNN-based steering controllers. Inference latency, power consumption, and system operating time were measured to evaluate computational capability and robustness. Our experiments demonstrated that TEACAR offers a scalable, modular, and cost-effective testbed for ITS research, education, and development. Our project repository is available on GitHub.
Zhongzheng Zhang, Maxwell Ruyle, Andrew Kappes +5
Trustworthy Engineered Autonomy (TEA) Lab, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida