Removable automotive LIDAR data collection pod
AssigneeAurora Operations, Inc.
InventorsNathaniel Gist, IV, Christopher Williams
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A vehicle agnostic removable pod can be mounted on a vehicle using one or more legs of a pod mount. The removable pod can collect and time stamp a variety of environmental data as well as vehicle data. For example, environmental data can be collected using a sensor suite which can include an IMU, 3D positioning sensor, one or more cameras, and/or a LIDAR unit. As another example, vehicle data can be collected via a CAN bus attached to the vehicle. Environmental data and/or vehicle data can be time stamped and transmitted to a remote server for further processing by a computing device.
Claims18
A method of collecting diverse driving data, the method comprising:
- for each of a plurality of removable pods each respectively attached to a unique vehicle in an environment:
- collecting respective environmental data of the environment using one or more sensors of a respective removable pod,
- recording the respective environmental data collected using the respective removable pod and corresponding vehicle data that corresponds to the respective environmental data,
- determining time stamps for each instance of the respective environmental data and time stamps for each instance of the corresponding vehicle data using a respective computing device connected to the respective removable pod,
- generating a respective aggregation of the time stamped instances of the respective environmental data and the time stamped instances of the corresponding vehicle data using the respective computing device, and
- transmitting, to a remote server, the respective aggregation of the time stamped instances of the respective environmental data and the time stamped instances of the corresponding vehicle data;
- aggregating, at the remote server, the time stamped instances of vehicle data and environmental data from the plurality of removable pods,
- wherein each of the unique vehicles is attached to at least one removable pod;
- generating training data for a machine learning model based on the time stamped instances of vehicle data and environmental data from the plurality of removable pods;
- and
- training, based on the training data, the machine learning model, to generate control signals for an autonomous vehicle.
A method of collecting diverse driving data, the method comprising:
- receiving, at a remote server and for each of a plurality of removable pods that are each respectively attached to a unique vehicle in an environment, a respective aggregation of time stamped instances of environmental data and vehicle data,
- wherein each of the vehicles is attached to at least one removable pod;
- aggregating, at the remote server, the time stamped instances of vehicle data and environmental data from the plurality of removable pods,
- wherein prior to receiving the aggregations for the plurality of removable pods, and for a respective removable pod of the plurality of removable pods,
- respective environmental data of the environment is collected using one or more sensors of the respective removable pod,
- the respective environmental data and corresponding vehicle data is recorded,
- the time stamps for each instance of the respective environmental data and time stamps for each instance of the corresponding vehicle data are determined using a respective computing device connected to the respective removable pod, and
- a respective aggregation of the time stamped instances of respective environmental data and the time stamped instances of corresponding vehicle data is generated using the respective computing device;
- generating training data for a machine learning model based on the time stamped instances of vehicle data and environmental data from the plurality of removable pods;
- and
- training, based on the training data, the machine learning model, to generate control signals for an autonomous vehicle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.