US 2014/0368493 A1 · OBJECT REMOVAL USING LIDAR-BASED CLASSIFICATION

Abstract

In scenarios involving the capturing of an environment, it may be desirable to remove temporary objects (e.g., vehicles depicted in captured images of a street) in furtherance of individual privacy and/or an unobstructed rendering of the environment. However, techniques involving the evaluation of visual images to identify and remove objects may be imprecise, e.g., failing to identify and remove some objects while incorrectly omitting portions of the images that do not depict such objects. However, such capturing scenarios often involve capturing a lidar point cloud, which may identify the presence and shapes of objects with higher precision. The lidar data may also enable a movement classification of respective objects differentiating moving and stationary objects, which may facilitate an accurate removal of the objects from the rendering of the environment (e.g., identifying the object in a first image may guide the identification of the object in sequentially adjacent images).

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method of generating a rendering of an environment including at least one object, the method performed on a device comprising a processor and comprising:

executing on the processor instructions configured to:
generate for the environment a lidar point cloud comprising at least one lidar point;
map respective lidar points in the lidar point cloud to identify at least one object in the environment;
select a movement classification of the respective at least one object according to the lidar points;
and
generate the rendering of the environment omitting at least a portion of the respective at least one object according to the movement classification of the object.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Object removal using lidar-based classification

Life of this patent

Object removal using lidar-based classification

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20