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US 10,871,782 B2Granted
Autonomous vehicle control using submaps
AssigneeUatc, LLC
InventorsAdam Milstein, Brett Browning
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system to use submaps to control operation of a vehicle is disclosed. A storage system may be provided with a vehicle to store a collection of submaps that represent a geographic area where the vehicle may be driven. A programmatic interface may be provided to receive submaps and submap updates independently of other submaps.
Claims24
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- retrieving, by one or more computing devices physically located onboard an autonomous vehicle, one or more submaps of a plurality of submaps representing an area of a road network for a geographic region;
- detecting, by the one or more computing devices, a submap change condition, wherein the submap change condition comprises one or more of an environmental condition, an event occurrence, or a submap update;
- retrieving, by the one or more computing devices, based at least in part on the submap change condition, one or more alternative submaps of the plurality of submaps, wherein the one or more alternative submaps represent the same area of the road network for the geographic region as the one or more submaps;
- determining, by the one or more computing devices and based at least in part on a comparison of contemporaneous sensor data of the autonomous vehicle with corresponding sensor data previously stored in association with the one or more alternative submaps, a location and pose of the autonomous vehicle within the area of the road network for the geographic region;
- and
- controlling, by the one or more computing devices and based at least in part on the location and pose of the autonomous vehicle, one or more operations of the autonomous vehicle.
3 more elements
An autonomous vehicle comprising:
- one or more processors;
- and
- a memory storing instructions that when executed by the one or more processors cause the autonomous vehicle to perform operations comprising:
- retrieving one or more submaps of a plurality of submaps representing an area of a road network for a geographic region;
- detecting a submap change condition, wherein the submap change condition comprises one or more of an environmental condition, and event occurrence, or a submap update;
- retrieving, based at least in part on the submap change condition, one or more alternative submaps of the plurality of submaps referencing data representing a point cloud representing a previous scene of the same area of the road network for the geographic region represented by the one or more submaps;
- receiving sensor data representing a point cloud representing a contemporaneous scene of the area of the road network;
- and
- determining, based at least in part on a comparison of the data representing the point cloud representing the previous scene with the data representing the point cloud representing the contemporaneous scene, one or more of a location or pose of the autonomous vehicle.
6 more elements
One or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions that when executed by one or more computing devices physically located onboard an autonomous vehicle cause the one or more computing devices to perform operations comprising:
- retrieving one or more submaps of a plurality of submaps representing an area of a road network for a geogrpahic region;
- detecting a submap change condition, wherein the submap change condition comprises one or more of an environmental condition, an event occurrence, or a submap update;
- retrieving, based at least in part on the submap change condition, one or more alternative submaps of the plurality of submaps referencing data representing a previous scene of the same area of the road network for the geographic region as the one or more submaps;
- receiving sensor data representing a contemporaneous scene of the area;
- and
- determining one or more of a location or pose of the autonomous vehicle by comparing one or more objects or features of the previous scene as represented by the one or more alternative submaps with one or more objects or features of the contemporaneous scene as represented by the sensor data to determine one or more of a spatial or geometric differential between the previous scene as represented by the one or more alternative submaps and the contemporaneous scene as represented by the sensor data.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.