Autonomous vehicle lane boundary detection systems and methods

A computer-implemented method of detecting lane boundaries, the method comprising:

• obtaining, by a computing system comprising one or more computing devices, a first type of sensor data associated with a surrounding environment of an autonomous vehicle;
• determining, by the computing system, a multi-dimensional feature volume of the first type of sensor data based at least in part on a first machine-learned model and the first type of sensor data;
• obtaining, by the computing system, a second type of sensor data associated with the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle;
• determining, by the computing system, a ground height estimation associated with the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on inputting the second type of sensor data into a machine-learned ground height estimation model and obtaining, from the machine-learned ground height estimation model, the ground height estimation;
• generating, by the computing system, overhead image data indicative of at least a portion of the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the multi-dimensional feature volume and the ground height estimation;
• and
• determining, by the computing system, one or more lane boundaries within the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the overhead image data and a third machine-learned model.

An autonomous vehicle comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer readable media that collectively store instructions that when executed by the one or more processors cause the autonomous vehicle to perform operations comprising:
• obtaining camera image data associated with a surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle and LIDAR data associated with the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle;
• generating two-dimensional overhead image data indicative of at least a portion of the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the camera image data and the LIDAR data, wherein generating the two-dimensional overhead image data comprises
• inputting the LIDAR data into a machine-learned ground height estimation model,
• obtaining, from the machine-learned ground height estimation model, the ground height estimation, and
• determining the two-dimensional overhead image data based at least in part the camera data and the ground height estimation;
• and
• determining one or more lane boundaries within the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the two-dimensional overhead image data indicative of at least the portion of the surrounding environment of the autonomous vehicle and a machine-learned lane boundary detection model.