CAMHighways: The Cambridge Highways dataset

Abstract

The CAMHighways dataset is presented, built from mobile mapping data that surveyed over 40km of UK Highways. The dataset consists of textured meshes for road assets (including the pavement, traffic signs, and road furniture), segmented and classified point clouds, orthomosaics generated from pavement images, defect label annotations and shapefiles, and ground penetrating radar point clouds. All modalities are georeferenced and can be integrated into game engines and/or GIS software. The main aim of this work is to facilitate and automate the building of a Digital Twin (DT), a digital representation of the highway, in order to streamline inspection and maintenance through virtual reality, robotics simulation, and DT- and AI-driven data analysis. It also serves as a valuable source for other applications, such as training semantic scene understanding and defect detection algorithms. This paper introduces the dataset and outlines the data preparation process, including novel automation methods developed for this purpose, as well as integration guidelines and possible applications.