# The Newer College Dataset: Handheld LiDAR, Inertial and Vision with Ground Truth

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.05691 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05691/

## Key facts

- Cited by 61 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 61)

- [How NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting are Reshaping SLAM: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13255/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Autonomous Driving Datasets: Statistics, Annotation Quality, and a Future Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01454/) (2024)
- [VECtor: A Versatile Event-Centric Benchmark for Multi-Sensor SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01404/) (2022)
- [SHINE-Mapping: Large-Scale 3D Mapping Using Sparse Hierarchical Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02299/) (2022)
- [PIN-SLAM: LiDAR SLAM Using a Point-Based Implicit Neural Representation for Achieving Global Map Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09101/) (2024)
- [NeRF-LOAM: Neural Implicit Representation for Large-Scale Incremental LiDAR Odometry and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10709/) (2023)
- [CT-ICP: Real-time Elastic LiDAR Odometry with Loop Closure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12979/) (2021)
- [Towards Robust Robot 3D Perception in Urban Environments: The UT Campus Object Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13549/) (2023)
- [The Oxford Spires Dataset: Benchmarking Large-Scale LiDAR-Visual Localisation, Reconstruction and Radiance Field Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10546/) (2024)
- [VILENS: Visual, Inertial, Lidar, and Leg Odometry for All-Terrain Legged Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07243/) (2021)
- [General Place Recognition Survey: Towards Real-World Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04812/) (2024)
- [The Hilti SLAM Challenge Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.11316/) (2021)
- [Multi-Camera LiDAR Inertial Extension to the Newer College Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08854/) (2021)
- [MCD: Diverse Large-Scale Multi-Campus Dataset for Robot Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11496/) (2024)
- [VBR: A Vision Benchmark in Rome](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11322/) (2024)
- [IoT-LM: Large Multisensory Language Models for the Internet of Things](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09801/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking Egocentric Visual-Inertial SLAM at City Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26639/) (2025)
- [VPGS-SLAM: Voxel-based Progressive 3D Gaussian SLAM in Large-Scale Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18992/) (2025)
- [A Survey on RGB-D Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05761/) (2022)
- [General Place Recognition Survey: Towards the Real-world Autonomy Age](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04497/) (2022)
- [HGS-Mapping: Online Dense Mapping Using Hybrid Gaussian Representation in Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20159/) (2024)
- [Real-time Multi-Adaptive-Resolution-Surfel 6D LiDAR Odometry using Continuous-time Trajectory Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02010/) (2021)
- [Register Any Point: Scaling 3D Point Cloud Registration by Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01850/) (2025)
- [3D LiDAR Mapping in Dynamic Environments Using a 4D Implicit Neural Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03388/) (2024)
- [BUFFER-X: Towards Zero-Shot Point Cloud Registration in Diverse Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07940/) (2025)
- [Seeing in the Dark: Benchmarking Egocentric 3D Vision with the Oxford Day-and-Night Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04224/) (2025)
- [Semantic Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06428/) (2022)
- [Stein ICP for Uncertainty Estimation in Point Cloud Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03287/) (2021)
- [Balancing the Budget: Feature Selection and Tracking for Multi-Camera Visual-Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05975/) (2021)
- [Outdoor Monocular Depth Estimation: A Research Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01399/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper we present a large dataset with a variety of mobile mapping sensors collected using a handheld device carried at typical walking speeds for nearly 2.2 km through New College, Oxford. The dataset includes data from two commercially available devices - a stereoscopic-inertial camera and a multi-beam 3D LiDAR, which also provides inertial measurements. Additionally, we used a tripod-mounted survey grade LiDAR scanner to capture a detailed millimeter-accurate 3D map of the test location (containing ~290 million points). Using the map we inferred centimeter-accurate 6 Degree of Freedom (DoF) ground truth for the position of the device for each LiDAR scan to enable better evaluation of LiDAR and vision localisation, mapping and reconstruction systems. This ground truth is the particular novel contribution of this dataset and we believe that it will enable systematic evaluation which many similar datasets have lacked. The dataset combines both built environments, open spaces and vegetated areas so as to test localization and mapping systems such as vision-based navigation, visual and LiDAR SLAM, 3D LIDAR reconstruction and appearance-based place recognition. The dataset is available at: ori.ox.ac.uk/datasets/newer-college-dataset