Creating Impactful Autonomous Driving Datasets: A Strategic Guide from Research Gap to Benchmark

Well-designed autonomous driving datasets have fundamentally shaped research progress, yet existing literature primarily describes what datasets contain rather than how to strategically design impactful ones. This is especially limiting for small and medium-sized labs and startups that cannot afford to misallocate scarce resources. We argue that impactful dataset creation begins with a diagnosis: whether a research question is blocked by a data problem or an evaluation problem, and proceeds by selecting the minimal data operator(s) that closes the resulting gap, recording new data only when no cheaper operator(s) suffices. We analyze the evolution of major autonomous driving (AD) datasets through this lens and distill a strategic framework spanning gap identification, operator choice, sensor suite design, and annotation strategy. We ground the framework in a running case study of our KITScenes dataset family. The datasets are available at: https://kitscenes.com/

The Road Ahead in Autonomous Driving: The KITScenes Multimodal Dataset

Existing autonomous driving datasets have enabled major progress, but fall short in sensor fidelity, map completeness, or geographic diversity. We present KITScenes Multimodal, a European dataset built around high-fidelity sensors and maps. Our fully synchronized sensor suite combines high-resolution global-shutter cameras, long-range lidar beyond 400m, 4D imaging radar, and redundant GNSS/INS localization. Our HD maps are, to our knowledge, the most complete of any sensor dataset, validated through autonomous driving trials on open-source software. For the first time in a public dataset, all driving-relevant traffic elements, such as traffic lights, are mapped in 3D to a reprojection-accurate level with full topological connectivity. Recorded in cities with irregular street layouts and mixed traffic modes, our dataset complements existing datasets by broadening the available geographic diversity. We also introduce four benchmarks, each advancing spatial learning for embodied AI: online HD map construction, long-range depth estimation, novel view synthesis, and end-to-end driving. Project page: https://kitscenes.com/