Systems and methods of imminent collision detection and mitigation for autonomous vehicles

A method for mitigating an imminent collision involving an autonomous vehicle, the autonomous vehicle including a collision mitigation controller separate from an autonomous driving perception and understanding module of the autonomous vehicle, the method comprising:

• receiving sensor data of an environment directly from one or more sensors of the autonomous vehicle while the autonomous vehicle is traveling in the environment;
• identifying one or more objects in the environment based solely on the sensor data captured by one or more cameras and using only a predetermined number of frames of sensor data, the predetermined number of frames being less than an original number of frames in the sensor data;
• determining that a collision with at least one of the one or more objects is imminent based on the identification of the one or more objects;
• bypassing at least part of a perception, planning, and control system of the autonomous vehicle;
• initiating one or more mitigating actions based on the determination that the collision is imminent;
• and
• controlling operation of the autonomous vehicle based on the one or more mitigating actions.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor of a collision mitigation controller separate from an autonomous driving perception and understanding module of an autonomous vehicle, cause the processor to perform a method for mitigating an imminent collision involving the autonomous vehicle, the method comprising:

• receiving sensor data of an environment directly from one or more sensors of the autonomous vehicle while the autonomous vehicle is traveling in the environment;
• identifying one or more objects in the environment based solely on the sensor data captured by one or more cameras and using only a predetermined number of frames of sensor data, the predetermined number of frames being less than an original number of frames in the sensor data;
• determining that a collision with at least one of the one or more objects is imminent based on the identification of the one or more objects;
• bypassing at least part of a perception, planning, and control system of the autonomous vehicle;
• initiating one or more mitigating actions based on the determination that the collision is imminent;
• and
• controlling operation of the autonomous vehicle based on the one or more mitigating actions.