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Prepare your test vehicle
1.) Mount radar sensoron your intended vehicle (autonomous or human-driven) with power and laptop connection. Field of view can be 360 degrees or less. The larger the field of view , the better but - a full 360 degree view is advised but not strictly required.
2.) Time Sync the Radar. This is a very important step. The radar uses NTP time synchronisation. An NTP server must be assigned to the radar. Documentation for configuring the radar to use an NTP server can be found here.
Note: If used, please ensure any other sensors such as GNSS devices are also time synchronised to the same NTP server to ensure that we can match data from other sensors to the radar scans.
2.) Picture and Diagram of the mounting position and orientation of the radar unit should be captured and provided to Navtech - the radar should be oriented facing forwards, as level as possible and with an unobstructed view over the vehicle. The following details are required:
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3.) Record the field of view of the sensor. Refer to documentation to turn on ‘Sector Blanking’ if you wish to operate with a restricted field of view.
4.) Download the Navtech Colossus Record Tool for data recording and SPxRadarViewLite/ROS driver to visualize radar data to check everything is working correctly in your setup. We would advise RadarViewLite. The ROS driver is more useful for developing your own radar data processing tools. Recording tool documentation can be found here.
5.) Decide a route you wish to localise over. This route can be from point A to point B or a loop. Ideally the route would be a loop i.e. start and end location are the same. This is the route along which you will map the environment and then localise through.
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At least two Runs should be recorded in a Data Recording Session - preferably 3 or 4 separate Runs. (1 Mapping + 2 or 3 localisation runs). Please note: all runs should be recorded as separate files.
Naming convention of data files should be clear , ( for example , 2020-01-01-13-30-00-route-1 ) and logged or recorded information should include :
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