Methods and systems for online synchronization of sensors of self-driving vehicles (SDV)

An electronic device comprising:

• at least one processor;
• at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising data, the data being generated by a camera system and a LIDAR system that are mounted onto a Self-Driving Vehicle (SDV) and are communicatively coupled, via a communication interface, with the at least one processor,
• the data including:
• (i) image data of the camera system mounted onto the SDV for generating the image data about a pre-determined portion of a surroundings of the SDV,
• the camera data being in a form of a sequence of snapshots generated by the camera system with a camera scanning frequency,
• the sequence of snapshots representing the pre-determined portion at different moments in time,
• (ii) map data from a LIDAR system mounted to the SDV for generating the map data about the surroundings of the SDV including the pre-determined portion,
• the map data being in a form of data points generated by the LIDAR system,
• the data points representing objects located in different portions of the surroundings of the SDV at different moments in time,
• at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprising executable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the electronic device to:
• cause the camera system and the LIDAR system to provide the image data and the map data in a common time referential,
• the common time referential being an indication of an absolute time during which the data is generated;
• determine a first timestamp for the map data,
• the first timestamp corresponding to a given moment in time in the common time referential during which the LIDAR system generated data points representing objects located in the pre-determined portion;
• determine a second timestamp for the image data, the second timestamps corresponding to an other given moment in time in the common time referential during which the camera system has been generating a given snapshot of the pre-determined portion;
• determine, a temporal offset between the first timestamp and the second timestamp,
• the temporal offset being indicative of a difference between the given moment in time and the other given moment in time in the common time referential;
• use the temporal offset to trigger a delay between subsequent snapshots generated by the camera system by adjusting the camera scanning frequency including dividing a duration of the temporal offset among a number of subsequent snapshots to add a respective time delay thereamong,
• such that (i) at least one subsequent snapshot is generated by the camera system and (ii) subsequent data points about the pre-determined portion is generated by the LIDAR system, at a same future moment in time in the common time referential.