NAPLab stands for NTNU Autonomous Perception Laboratory and is a part of the Norwegian Open AI Lab. General information about NAPLab can be found on its website hosted on the NTNU web infrastructure.
NAPLab aims at conducting research on perception problems for autonomous cars with a strong focus on Deep-Learning methods. Some of the research topics include: object recognition, dataset anonymization, reinforcement learning, simulation environment, end-to-end learning, SLAM... Previous work on those topic can be found in this Dropbox folder.
Communication at the lab is done over the nap-lab Slack. The lab also has a SharePoint which is not extensively used at time of writing.
A high-resolution version of the NAPLab logo is hosted online and is free to use.
NAPLab currently has two robotic platforms. The SPURV is a tiny robot built by KVS Technologies, with a camera and a handy ROS system that can be used to prototype perception and control algorithms. The lab also has a KIA Niro which is fully equipped with a broad range of state-of-the-art sensors. The rest of this document will focus on the KIA Niro operations.
The lab is located in the right side of the room IDI 458. It has 4 PCs equipped with NVIDIA 1080 GPUs, handy for models training. Three PCs have an installation of Ubuntu 16.04 and one has Ubuntu 14.04 for the needs of VIRES VTD. One Acer “gamer” laptop with Ubuntu 16.04 and a ROS installation can be used when on the go (in the KIA Niro etc...) but it has quite a short battery life. One LG laptop is also located at the lab and is used to program the SPURV.
NAPLab has a server accessible to allowed members by SSH at the address nap01.idi.ntnu.no this server contains two NVIDIA Tesla V100. It is also used to store sensors data recording.
A variety of handy tools can be found in the lab’s cupboard. Some of those tools include: XBox controllers and a steering wheel controller for data acquisition or for the control of the KIA Niro.
NAPLab currently has two evaluation licenses for HD Maps drawing software: VectorZero RoadRunner and VIRES VTD ROD.
We currently do not have a fixed test track for our experiments but we tend to test our car in . We also visited a which was considered not satisfying because not flat enough and there seemed to be a misunderstanding about pricing.
The lab has a number of online accounts required to maintain its operations. An Apple account is used to operate the iPad inside the KIA Niro. The address associated to that account is naplab@icloud.com.
We also use a Google account for Google Cloud APIs billing.