Alignment of data captured by autonomous vehicles to generate high definition maps

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions for:

• receiving sensor data captured by a plurality of vehicles driving through a path in a geographical region;
• generating a pose graph, wherein each node of the pose graph represents a pose of a vehicle, the pose comprising a location and orientation of the vehicle, and wherein each edge between a pair of nodes represents a transformation between nodes of the pair of nodes;
• selecting a subset of nodes from the pose graph, wherein selecting the subset of nodes from the pose graph comprises:
• identifying nodes having high quality global navigation satellite system (GNSS) poses;
• and
• increasing the likelihood of selecting the identified nodes compared to nodes with lower quality GNSS poses;
• for each node of the subset of nodes, identifying a GNSS pose corresponding to the node;
• performing optimization of the pose graph based on constraints that minimize the pose difference between each of the nodes of the subset and the corresponding GNSS pose;
• merging sensor data captured by plurality of autonomous vehicles to generate a point cloud representation of a geographical region;
• generating a high-definition map based on the point cloud representation;
• and
• sending the high-definition map to one or more autonomous vehicles for navigating in the geographical region.

A computer system comprising:

• an electronic processor;
• and
• a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by the electronic processor, the instructions for:
• receiving sensor data captured by a plurality of vehicles driving through a path in a geographical region;
• generating a pose graph, wherein each node of the pose graph represents a pose of a vehicle, the pose comprising a location and orientation of the vehicle, and wherein each edge between a pair of nodes represents a transformation between nodes of the pair of nodes;
• selecting a subset of nodes from the pose graph, wherein selecting the subset of nodes from the pose graph comprises:
• identifying nodes having high quality global navigation satellite system (GNSS) poses;
• and
• increasing the likelihood of selecting the identified nodes compared to nodes with lower quality GNSS poses;
• for each node of the subset of nodes, identifying a GNSS pose corresponding to the node;
• performing optimization of the pose graph based on constraints that minimize the pose difference between each of the nodes of the subset and the corresponding GNSS pose;
• merging sensor data captured by plurality of autonomous vehicles to generate a point cloud representation of a geographical region;
• generating a high-definition map based on the point cloud representation;
• and
• sending the high-definition map to one or more autonomous vehicles for navigating in the geographical region.