System and method for determining the direction of an actor

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that are executable by one or more computing devices, wherein executing the instructions causes the one or more computing devices to perform functions comprising:

• receiving, from at least one depth sensor, point cloud data for an actor including a plurality of points that are representative of the actor within an environment;
• generating a plurality of data segments of the point cloud data corresponding to respective height levels for the actor, wherein each data segment includes a portion of the plurality of points;
• determining an area value for each data segment;
• determining a transition from a first data segment to an adjacent second data segment based on a difference between the area value for the first data segment and the area value for the second data segment;
• determining based on the transition that the first data segment is representative of a head of the actor and that the second data segment is representative of a body of the actor;
• providing information indicating a direction of the actor based at least on the determined second data segment representative of the body of the actor;
• and
• adjusting operation of a robotic device based on the direction of the actor.

A robotic device comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory storing instructions that when executed by the processor cause the robotic device to perform functions comprising:
• receiving point cloud data for an actor including a plurality of points that are representative of the actor within an environment;
• generating a plurality of data segments of the point cloud data corresponding to respective height levels for the actor, wherein each data segment includes a portion of the plurality of points;
• determining an area value for each data segment;
• determining a transition from a first data segment to an adjacent second data segment based on a difference between the area value for the first data segment and the area value for the second data segment;
• determining based on the transition that the first data segment is representative of a head of the actor and that the second data segment is representative of a body of the actor;
• determining a direction of the actor based at least on the determined second data segment representative of the body of the actor;
• and
• adjusting operation of the robotic device based on the direction of the actor.