Data recording tools

[mitsudome-r]

There was a discussion from Open AD Kit WG regarding recording data and uploading online for development purposes.

I would like to use this discussion thread to define what would be the topics to record.

Possible approach:

1. Only record very minimal set of topics (i.e., sensor data + vehicle data). We should be able to reproduce all other topics by playing bag files with Autoware launch files. However, since Autoware and rosbag are not deterministic, we might not be able to reproduce some of the issues during play back.
2. Record all the topics. By recording the all topics, it's very likely that we can reproduce the same error, but we would have very large recorded data.
3. Compromise of 1 and 2. We record the key topics that works as "checkpoints" of the Autoware pipeline. (e.g., record the topics in this diagram that Fatih created). I can list out the actual topic names and topic types from current Autoware Universe's launch file if people are interested.

I am personally in favor of option 3, but I would like to hear other's opinion as well.

[TakaHoribe]

With option 1, it is difficult to reproduce all data even if Autoware is deterministic. Since a large part of Autoware's processing relies on previous values (e.g., low-pass filtering), all data must be saved from the time Autoware was started to completely reproduce the data offline. (I have already suffered from this problem many times.)
Also, it requires users to restart Autoware every time when the record is stopped or restarted, and this is not practical.

Option 2 sounds not practical as well due to the large quantity of data.

So, I recommend option 3.

[kenji-miyake]

I generally agree with Taka and Mitsudome-san.

For debugging: Option 3
For data collection (for perception development): Option 1

[armaganarsln]

We were thinking to record automatically the necessary data when autonomous driving is engaged and turned off when manual driving is engaged to be able to re-create or test the issues during autonomous driving. Data collection for development of perception stack or other modules could be the next step forward. Hopefully, my dream is to have an open-source dataset published by Autoware Foundation in the near future.

[xmfcx]

@xmfcx consider the recording of topics as part of AD-API and autoware's architecture in general.