System and method to help supplement a vehicle?s sensor data

A vehicle for supplementing vehicle sensor data with-supplemental sensor data from one or more sensors on a user device, the vehicle comprising:

• a sensor suite including external vehicle sensors to sense an environment and generate sensor data;
• a perception system to receive the sensor data and to acquire map data and to use the map data and the sensor data to generate vehicle real world environment data;
• a user device interface module to communicate with the user device;
• and
• a user device resource usage module to use supplemental sensor data from one or more sensors on the user device to supplement the sensor data.

At least one machine-readable medium comprising one or more instructions that, when executed by at least one processor, causes the at least one processor to:

• determine that sensor data from an autonomous vehicle's sensors needs to be supplemented with supplementary sensor data;
• identify a supplementary sensor on a user device, wherein the supplementary sensor can provide the supplementary sensor data;
• if a user of the user device allows the supplementary sensor to be accessed, communicate a library of object recognition profiles for the supplementary sensor to the user device;
• capture supplementary sensor data related to an environment in a vicinity of the user device;
• use the library of object recognition profiles for the supplementary sensor to use the captured supplementary sensor data to identify objects and/or features in the environment in the vicinity of the user device;
• and
• use the identified objects and/or features in the environment to supplement data collected by the autonomous vehicle's sensors.