Impact Data Generation

About

This Python script utilizes BeamNG.tech and the BeamNGpy library to generate various vehicle impact scenarios and output surround views of the affected vehicle in color and semantically annotated images. Additionally, the data includes information about the node and beam structure of the vehicle before and after the impact to allow assessment of damages. It was used as part of a research project to generate training data.

All crashes include at least one vehicle, usually referred to as vehicle A, and a possible other vehicle B being the second participant in a crash. Each of these crashes randomly varies at least the weather, time of day, color of the involved vehicles, and various parts of vehicle A. Namely, these parts are:

• Front bumper
• Front bumper bar
• Rear bumper
• Left fender
• Right fender
• Hitch
• Radiator
• Hood
• Roof
• Wheels

The types of crashes are hardcoded, but also include randomized parameters. As a special case, there is also the possibility of simply having no crash, which produces output of the vehicle in an undamaged state, though weather, color, and parts are still varied in this case. Possible crash scenarios include:

• T-Bone: Vehicle A is stationary and gets hit on the side by vehicle B. In this scenario, the speed of B, the angle of impact, and position of impact are varied randomly in addition to the parameters listed above.
• Rear end: Vehicle A is stationary and gets hit in the rear by vehicle B. Here, the speed of B, the angle of impact, and the position of impact are varied randomly in addition to the parameters listed above.
• Frontal impact: Vehicle B is stationary and gets hit in the front by vehicle B. The speed of B, the angle of impact, and the position of impact are varied randomly in addition to the parameters listed above.
• Pole crash: Vehicle A drives into a pole. Here, the side that hits the pole (front/rear), the speed of A, the angle of impact, and the position of impact are varied randomly in addition to the parameters listed above.
• No crash: Special case where no crash happens leading to imagery and metadata of the vehicle in an undamaged state. Only the parameters listed above are varied in this case as there is no other vehicle and no impact.

All produced output is packaged into zip files. These files are named according to the following convention:

{unix timestamp}_{hash of scenario parameters}_{count}_{type}.zip

Where count is simply an integer to increment in case there is another zip with the same name and type is the type of images contained in the zip. This can either be image, for regular color images, or annotation for annotated images. Example zip names produced are:

• 1568899113_81725586f3f4018d4d7c8e7f5fbc48_0_annotation.zip
• 1568899113_81725586f3f4018d4d7c8e7f5fbc48_0_image.zip

Setup

Lua

Prior to usage, the Lua extension contained in the lua folder of this repository needs to be placed either inside the local BeamNG.tech installation or packed up as a mod and placed in the userpath to make it available to this application.

Python

This script requires at least Python 3.6. Since the library requires ImageMagick's Python API wand, and wand on Windows requires extra steps for installation, make sure to go through the necessary steps outlined in wand's documentation first. Other dependencies can be pulled in using the following command:

pip install .

This also registers a new command for generation impactgen.

Configuration

The behavior of this script can be changed using an external configuration file. When the script is first launched, it generates such a file with default values in the current working directory as impactgen.yml. In this file you will find various settings regarding crashes and their output. They include:

• imageWidth - Width of each rendered image in pixels.
• imageHeight - Height of each rendered image in pixels.
• colorFormat - Format string of the color image sequence in zips.
• annotFormat - Format string of the annotation image sequence in zips.
• cameraRadius - Radius of the circle the surround camera flies around the affected vehicle.
• cameraHeight - Height of the camera in meters. Note: The height is relative to the center of the vehicle, hence the default value being 1.25 and not 1.8.
• fov - Field of View angle of rendered images. This affects how wide the "lens" of the camera is.
• times - List of daytimes to vary during data augmentation.
• clouds - List of cloud coverage values to vary during data augmentation. Note: On the smallgrid map, no clouds exist so this parameter is ignored. Only applies to West Coast USA.
• fogs - List of fog densities to vary during data augmentation. Note: On the smallgrid map, no clouds exist so this parameter is ignored. Only applies to West Coast USA.
• colors - List of vehicle colors to vary during data augmentation. This list contains sublists of RGBA values, where the alpha value determines the reflexivity of the vehicle.

Some additional configuration can be passed to the script at runtime, as described in the following section.

Usage

The main mode of operation for this script is for data generation. This can be started using the command impactgen generate. At least two arguments are required for this to work: A path to the copy of BeamNG.tech and a path to the folder zips should be placed into. The path to BeamNG.tech needs to point to the folder containing files like startup.ini — not the Bin64 folder which contains the actual binaries. An example invokation would be:

impactgen generate D:\BeamNG.tech\ D:\data\

A short overview of available parameters can also be obtained by running the script with the -h or --help flag.

Note: The script makes no adjustments to BeamNG.tech's graphics quality settings. To ensure maximum quality of the output, the user needs to start BeamNG.tech manually and adjust settings according to their preferences.

Background Variations

When launching the program with the --smallgrid option, data generation takes place on an infinite flat plane. This allows for procedural variations of the ground and sky textures, similar to research by Tremblay et al. This does require some preparation, though, as there needs to be a batch of textures available in the smallgrid level. These textures need to be in the DDS image format and listed in a json-file the simulator understands. To this end, this script offers a few utility commands that can convert common image formats to DDS and generate a coresponding json file that lists textures available for variations. These include:

impactgen convert-materials <bng_home> <image_dir>

This command converts all .jpg, .png, .bmp, .gif images in the <image_dir> to DDS, places them in the level folder for smallgrid in <bng_home> and generates a corresponding materials json file that informs the simulator about the available materials.

impactgen compute-similarity <bng_home> --threshold 70

With this command one can precompute a similarity matrix that contains ORB-based similarity scores. This matrix is used to avoid redundant variations of very similar images.

Once materials are converted and a similarity matrix generated, generation on smallgrid with random variations of sky and ground textures can be started using:

impactgen generate D:\BeamNG.tech\ D:\data\ --smallgrid --poolsize 16 --similarity 0.7

These flags tell the program to load generation on the smallgrid map, pick 16 images whose similarity is below the given threshold, and goes through each pair of those images for sky and ground material for each crash. Note this means the amount of zips per crash generated is multiplied by n^2, where n is the given pool size.

The project originally used the Flickr8k dataset, but users are free to pick any set of images using the above commands.

Output

Two zip archives per crash are saved into the specified output directory. Each zip contains a series of images rendering a surround view of the vehicle after the crash, with one zip containing regular color images and the other zip corresponding semantic annotations. An example of both of these images can be seen at the top of this document. In addition to the images, each archive also contains several json files containing metadata. This includes:

• parts.json - Structured data about the vehicle's parts, most importantly the corresponding color in the annotation
• scenario.json - Data about the scenario that produced the crash
• objectAnnotation.json - Information about each color in the semantic annotation and what type of object it represents
• partAnnotation.json - Information about each color of vehicle parts and what kind of part it represents

Archives also contain a mesh of the vehicle after the crash in the GLTF format. This mesh file contains information about the vehicle's nodes and beams as well, allowing inspection of its structure offline.