Systems and methods for autonomous vehicle path planning
AssigneeThe Boeing Company
InventorsJoshua D. Kalin, Nick S. Evans, Taylor S. Loper, Joseph E. Fagerburg
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods for autonomous vehicle path planning are described herein. An example vehicle includes an image sensor to obtain an image of a scene of an area surrounding the vehicle. The vehicle also includes navigation system circuitry to: analyze the image and generate a semantically segmented image that identifies one or more types of features in the image; project the semantically segmented image to a two-dimensional (2D) map projection; convert the 2D map projection into a cost map; and determine a path for the vehicle based on the cost map.
Claims18
A vehicle comprising:
- an image sensor to obtain an image of a scene of an area of a celestial body surrounding the vehicle, wherein the vehicle includes a rover on the celestial body;
- one or more wheels;
- driving system circuitry;
- and
- navigation system circuitry to:
- generate, based on the image, a semantically segmented image that identifies one or more types of features in the image;
- determine an attitude of the vehicle based on output from an inertial measurement unit (IMU);
- project the semantically segmented image to a two-dimensional (2D) map projection based on the attitude to account for at least one of an angle or a skew of the image;
- convert the 2D map projection into a cost map, the cost map defining a grid of values corresponding to at least one hazard of the area of the celestial body;
- determine a path for the vehicle based on the cost map;
- and
- control the driving system circuitry to operate the one or more wheels to drive the vehicle along the determined path.
A non-transitory machine readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed, cause programmable circuitry of a vehicle to:
- access an image of a scene of an area of a celestial body surrounding the vehicle, the image obtained by an image sensor on the vehicle, wherein the vehicle includes a rover on the celestial body;
- generate, based on the image, a semantically segmented image that identifies one or more types of features in the image;
- determine an attitude of the vehicle based on output from an inertial measurement unit (IMU);
- project the semantically segmented image to a two-dimensional (2D) map projection based on the attitude to account for at least one of an angle or a skew of the image;
- convert the 2D map projection to a cost map, the cost map defining a grid of values corresponding to at least one hazard of the area of the celestial body;
- determine a path for the vehicle based on the cost map;
- and
- operate at least one wheel of the vehicle to drive the vehicle along the determined path.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.