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 at least one data processing means, comprising:

• acquiring LIDAR data of the environment of the motor vehicle as polar coordinates with the LIDAR sensor;
• eliminating the data for which the polar coordinate relating to the angle of the beam with respect to the plane of the vehicle is greater than or equal to zero from the acquired LIDAR data;
• 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 notably 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.