Method of road detection for an automotive vehicle fitted with a LIDAR sensor

A road detection method for a motor vehicle provided with a rotary multilayer LIDAR sensor and data processing circuitry, the method comprising:

• acquiring LIDAR data of an environment of the motor vehicle as polar coordinates with the LIDAR sensor;
• eliminating the data for which the polar coordinate relating to an angle of a beam with respect to a plane of the vehicle is greater than or equal to zero from the acquired LIDAR data;
• and
• for each angle of the beam with respect to the plane of the vehicle, and for each LIDAR datum, the following are carried out:
• determining theoretical coordinates of a point, corresponding to the LIDAR datum, as a function of the angle of the beam with respect to the plane of the vehicle and of the angle of the beam in the plane of the vehicle,
• determining a standard deviation between the theoretical coordinates and the coordinates of the LIDAR datum, and
• determining that the LIDAR datum forms part of the road when the standard deviation is lower than a predefined threshold, wherein
• a LIDAR datum is a point of a cloud of points acquired by the LIDAR sensor over one revolution, or a section comprising at least two consecutive points of the cloud of points acquired by the LIDAR sensor that have the same beam angle with respect to the plane of the vehicle, and
• when the LIDAR datum is a point of the cloud of points, the theoretical coordinates of the point corresponding to the LIDAR datum are determined as those of a point contained within an ideal circle inscribed within the plane of the road centered on the vehicle, the ideal circle surrounding the vehicle,
• at least two sectors are determined in the plane of the vehicle for each angle of the beam with respect to the plane of the vehicle, each sector being associated with a direction of scanning the sector,
• for each sector, the LIDAR data are scanned in the scanning direction, a determination is made as to whether each LIDAR datum belongs to the road, the scanning of the LIDAR data is interrupted when the method determines that a LIDAR datum does not belong to the road and when the method determines that the LIDAR data of the sector that have not been scanned do not belong to the road,
• a sector of the at least two sectors comprises a LIDAR datum having a same angle of the beam with respect to the plane of the vehicle as a LIDAR datum of another sector of the at least two sectors, and
• each LIDAR datum within each sector of the at least two sectors has the same angle of the beam with respect to the plane of the vehicle as all other LIDAR datum within the same sector.