Methods and systems for computer-based determining of presence of objects

A method of determining an object potentially present around a vehicle, the vehicle having:

• a first sensor configured to capture an image of a surrounding area;
• a second sensor configured to capture a 3-D point cloud data of the surrounding area;
• a processor coupled to the first sensor and the second sensor, the processor having access to computer-executable instructions, which instructions when executed cause the processor to execute:
• receiving, from the first sensor the image captured by the first sensor;
• processing the image to generate an image tensor representative of information contained therein;
• receiving, from the second sensor, an indication of the 3-D point cloud data captured by the second sensor;
• processing the 3-D point cloud data to generate a 3-D point cloud data tensor representative of information contained therein including at least one portion of the 3-D point cloud data having information about at least one object candidate;
• analyzing the image tensor to identify a relevant data portion of the image information relevant to the at least one object candidate;
• amalgamating the 3-D point cloud data tensor with a relevant portion of the image tensor associated with the relevant data portion of the image information to generate an amalgamated tensor associated with the surrounding area;
• storing the amalgamated tensor, the amalgamated tensor to be used by a machine learning algorithm (MLA) to determine presence of the object in the surrounding area.