Off-road/Racing Working Group Meeting 2026/04/23

[pojenwang]

Administrative

Previous Meeting Minutes

Attendees

• Po-Jen Wang (AWF)
• David Walmroth (Open AD Kit / Pix-Moving)
• Jack Silberman (UCSD)
• Atanasko

Minutes: Po-Jen Wang

Off-road Simulator Update

• Repository moved from UPenn to Autoware: https://github.com/autowarefoundation/autoware_off-road_sim
• Requested feature: gym environment for optimized RL pipeline
  • Able to manually step into the simulation (decouple from the sim clock)
  • Issac Lab integration (batch rendering)
• Autoware demo is still in progress. Tuned various parameters to avoid stopping. Working on documentation, and the updated universe will be released soon.

Off-road Mining Demo Update

• Repository (documentation in progress): https://github.com/autowarefoundation/autoware.off-road
• Added ObjectSeg, same segmentation-based architecture as FreespaceSeg, but for 5 classes:
  • 0: background
  • 1: man-made_structures
  • 2: vulnerable_living
  • 3: vehicle
  • 4: natural_obstacles
• CARLA sim now generates segmentation datasets
  • A config file carla_objectseg.yaml defines the mapping between CARLA tags to the ObjectSeg class IDs. The CARLA mining environment has a different class (tag) setup than the standard environment
  • Trained an ObjectSeg model using the CARLA-generated dataset
• Updated CARLA mining demo video:
  • Runs FreespaceContour and ObjectSeg on the camera image that detects drivable contour and other mining trucks
  • GapFollower module identifies a target gap within the drivable contour and determines a trajectory toward the gap
  • If a detected truck gets close enough to the ego truck, the trajectory is recalculated toward that truck to simulate convoy following
  • Longitudinal and lateral controllers compute the steering and throttle/brake that follow the trajectory
  • Demo video

• AWF Work Group overview: https://autoware.org/join-a-work-group/