What is OpenDRIVE?
OpenDRIVE is the ASAM open standard for describing the static road network in driving simulations. The format carries an .xodr extension and is the canonical road-geometry container that OpenSCENARIO files reference.
What an OpenDRIVE file contains
Section titled “What an OpenDRIVE file contains”An .xodr document describes the road network analytically — not as a set of polygons, but as parametric geometry:
- Roads with reference lines, expressed as
line,arc,spiral,poly3, orparamPoly3segments along the s-axis. - Lane sections with left, center, and right lanes; each lane has widths, types, and lane-to-lane successor / predecessor links.
- Junctions that connect roads at intersections, with explicit incoming-road to connecting-road mappings.
- Road objects like guardrails, traffic signs, traffic lights, and crosswalks.
- Elevation and superelevation profiles for the road’s 3D shape.
The analytical representation is what lets simulators query “what is the lane center at s=42m on road 7” cheaply. It is also why the format is generally edited through tools rather than by hand.
OpenDRIVE versions worth knowing
Section titled “OpenDRIVE versions worth knowing”- OpenDRIVE 1.4 / 1.5 — long-time stable revisions, still common in older tools.
- OpenDRIVE 1.6 / 1.7 — incremental improvements and clarifications.
- OpenDRIVE 1.8 — the current revision that drawtonomy targets in its export. RoadRunner supports the full 1.4–1.8 range for import and export.
Tools tend to be backward-compatible but not forward-compatible — check what your simulator expects.
OpenDRIVE vs Lanelet2
Section titled “OpenDRIVE vs Lanelet2”Two HD-map-adjacent formats often confused:
| Aspect | OpenDRIVE | Lanelet2 |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | ASAM, simulation industry | Autoware, FZI |
| Geometry | Analytical (arc, spiral, polynomial) | Polylines (lanelets bounded by linestrings) |
| Primary consumer | CARLA, esmini, RoadRunner, Cognata, SCANeR | Autoware planning, perception ground truth |
| Storage | XML .xodr | OSM XML |
Both can describe similar road networks but optimise for different downstream tasks. See What is Lanelet2? for the other side.
Common authoring tools
Section titled “Common authoring tools”- MathWorks RoadRunner — a widely used HD-map editor with full OpenDRIVE 1.4–1.8 support. Commercial, with campus licenses available at many universities.
- Truevision Designer — a desktop OpenDRIVE editor, free for non-commercial use, often used as an open alternative to RoadRunner.
- Blender Driving Scenario Creator — open-source Blender add-on with triple clothoid road geometry and proper junction support.
- LaneMaker — a free, Apache-2.0 desktop editor for road networks with built-in traffic simulation, aimed at casual users.
- odrviewer.io and odrplot — viewer-side tools for inspecting
.xodrfiles in the browser, without editing. - drawtonomy — a browser whiteboard with a partial OpenDRIVE 1.8 export.
Where drawtonomy fits
Section titled “Where drawtonomy fits”drawtonomy is not an HD-map editor in the RoadRunner / Truevision / BDSC sense. Its OpenDRIVE export is partial — useful for simple scenes, not for production HD maps:
- Sketch a simple road layout — intersections, lane merges, basic geometry — and export OpenDRIVE 1.8 alongside an OpenSCENARIO 1.3 file.
- Export entirely in the browser. No install, no account.
- The result plays back in esmini for simple scenes.
What drawtonomy’s exporter does not emit today (per its docs):
- OpenDRIVE junction primitives (
<junction>). The lane-level next / previous links are emitted, but the junction wrapper is on the roadmap. - Traffic signs as
<signal>entries. - Analytical geometry (clothoids, polynomials). drawtonomy works in 2D polylines and emits OpenDRIVE that approximates those.
For survey-grade or production HD maps, use a dedicated HD-mapping tool. drawtonomy is the sketch layer.