US 12,761,359 B2 · Ground intensity LIDAR localizer

Abstract

A system for determining a pose of a vehicle and building maps from vehicle priors processes received ground intensity LIDAR data including intensity data for points believed to be on the ground and height information to form ground intensity LIDAR (GIL) images including pixels in 2D coordinates where each pixel contains an intensity value, a height value, and x- and y-gradients of intensity and height. The GIL images are formed by filtering aggregated ground intensity LIDAR data falling into a same spatial bin on the ground and using a registration algorithm to align two GIL images relative to one another by estimating a 6-degree-of-freedom pose with associated uncertainty that minimizes error between the two GIL images. The aligned GIL images are provided as a pose estimate to a localizer. The system may provide online localization and pose estimation, prior building, and prior to prior alignment pose estimation using image-based techniques.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A system for determining a pose of a vehicle, comprising:

at least one processor;
and
a machine-readable medium comprising instructions thereon that, when executed by the at least one processor, causes the at least one processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving ground intensity lidar data comprising first intensity data describing a first ground point and height data describing the first ground point;
constructing a vehicle prior at least in part by matching ground plane data to the ground intensity lidar data, the ground plane data describing a ground plane as a plurality of at least partially overlapping ground plane cells;
determining a single height value for a ground plane cell of the ground plane data, the determining of the single height value for the ground plane cell being based on a portion of the ground intensity lidar data corresponding to the ground plane cell;
determining a single intensity value for the ground plane cell based on the portion of the ground intensity lidar data;
generating an image prior that comprises a plurality of pixels, at least one of the plurality of pixels corresponding to the ground plane cell;
and
autonomously operating the vehicle based at least in part on the image prior.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Ground intensity LIDAR localizer

Life of this patent

Ground intensity LIDAR localizer

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20