Real-time HDR video for vehicle control
AssigneeContrast, Inc.
InventorsWillie C. Kiser, Nora Tocci, Michael D. Tocci
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The invention provides an autonomous vehicle with a video camera that merges images taken a different light levels by replacing saturated parts of an image with corresponding parts of a lower-light image to stream a video with a dynamic range that extends to include very low-light and very intensely lit parts of a scene. The high dynamic range (HDR) camera streams the HDR video to a HDR system in real time—as the vehicle operates. As pixel values are provided by the camera's image sensors, those values are streamed directly through a pipeline processing operation and on to the HDR system without any requirement to wait and collect entire images, or frames, before using the video information.
Claims18
A high-dynamic range (HDR) system comprising:
- an HDR camera installed in a vehicle having autonomous capability, the HDR camera comprising a plurality of image sensors coupled to a processing device, wherein the HDR camera is operable to stream pixel values from each of the plurality of image sensors through a pipeline on the processing device, wherein the pipeline synchronizes the pixel values at a synchronization module and merges the pixel values to produce a real-time HDR video;
- and
- a processing system configured to communicate with the HDR camera and a control system of the vehicle, wherein the processing system is operable to determine, based on the HDR video, a characteristic of a feature in an environment surrounding the vehicle and to issue to the control system an instruction that directs a change in the operation of the vehicle based on the characteristic.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.