In 2020 and 2021 a new perception testbed was developed at NASA Ames Research center to collect data from an array of sensing systems representative of those that could be found on a future UAM vehicle. Under the Perception task of the Autonomous Systems project, funded by the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) through the Transformative Tools and Technologies project, this testbed was both built and deployed for testing in the Fog Chamber located at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This site contains an outline of the tests, test data, and associated documentation.

In May of 2021, the perception testbed was deployed to the Fog Chamber at Sandia National Laboratories. The testbed featured a FLIR Blackfly visual spectrum camera, a FLIR Boson longwave infrared camera, and a AEye 4Sight M intelligent LIDAR. Within the chamber various fog species, including coastal fog, may be produced consistently. Over the course of five days, more than 40 experiments, calibration runs, baseline tests, and additional tests were performed in the fog chamber with 3 different targets. A human target, a small (less than 10 kg) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and a USAF 1951 resolution target were used in testing. Controlled test variables include, the ambient lighting in the chamber, target distance from the perception testbed, and target type and temperature of the target.

Testbed Sensor Specifications:

• FILR Blackfly USB Camera: model: BFS-U3-50S5C-C, 5 MP, 35 FPS, SONY IMX264
• Blackfly Lens: Fujinon 15mm 50mm 1/3 inch CS mount lens
• FILR Boson 640
• Boson Lens: 72 mm lens with 6 degrees FoV
• AEye 4Sight M LIDAR System

More than 2 terabytes of data was collected during the deployment to the Fog Chamber. This data consists of images from both the visual spectrum camera and the longwave infrared camera, range and intensity data from the LIDAR, and fog characterization data from the chamber's own sensing systems. To promote consumption of the data by the public, the data and documentation are here arranged by experiment. Three types of test exist, 1) baseline tests - those that do not feature fog, were used to collect a baseline of a new experimental configuration, 2) fog tests - experiments featuring fog and lasting until significant dissipation of the fog, 3) public affairs office tests - tests featuring humans in the fog to document the tests and provide relatable data for consumption by the broader public.

Characterization of the developed fog within the chamber is done with Sandia's instrumentation which measure both fog particle size distribution and meteorological optical range (MOR). A Spraytec instrument from Malvern Instruments which uses a laser diffraction as a method for measuring droplet size distribution is used to characterize the fog in real-time. Additionally, a transmissometer consisting of a light emitting diode (LED) and a standard photodetector at a set distance across the length of the fog chamber is used to calculate the relative MOR measurement for baseline tests with no fog and fog tests. The data from these instruments is collected into sets representing each day of experimentation (4 days). On a given day, the timestamps of the imagery of LIDAR data may be fit to the timestamps from the environmental data. Environment data for all four days of testing is available in the   fog_chamber_environment_.zip,  file.

The experiment data is enclosed in .zip files with the name of the given experiment. Within each zip file there are two folders, "Database" - which holds the images from the visible spectrum camera and longwave infrared camera and a metadata.csv file with information about collection sequence and file names. The older folder "Lidar" contains both point-cloud .csv files with associated frame number in the file name and image files taken with the LIDAR's fish-eye lens.

The following table is a list of the Perception Testbed Fog Chamber Experiments with links to their data and associated documentation.

Experiment Table

George E. Gorospe
 
 

Last Updated
16 December 2021