公开(公告)号：EP4390448A1

公开(公告)日：2024-06-26

申请号：EP23212122.8

申请日：2023-11-24

申请人： WAYMO LLC

发明人： ZHANG, Jingyuan Linda ,  SACHDEV, Kanika ,  ONAL, Caner ,  MARX, Michael ,  WANG, Yuchi

IPC分类号： G01S7/481 ,  G01S7/497 ,  G01S17/931

CPC分类号： G01S17/931 ,  G01S7/4815 ,  G01S7/497

摘要： Embodiments relate to differential methods for determining environment estimation, lidar impairment detection, and filtering. An embodiment includes dividing (502) a plurality of lidar device channels into a first group and a second group and interleaving the channels. The method involves applying (504) a threshold to a subset of the lidar channels. The lidar channels are divided into two groups: a "threshold" group and a "non-threshold" group. The group of channels that apply the threshold have less sensitivity, and are therefore less sensitive to dim returns, whereas the group of channels without the threshold maintain their sensitivity to dim returns. The slight offset in the sensitivity of the detector creates a differential in the sensitivity to the dim returns. Dim returns can be the result of fog, rain, sleet, hail, dust, haze, smog and snow, or other atmospheric scattering media.The difference in the statistical distribution between several metrics between the threshold and non-threshold channels, can be used to estimate whether or not there is an atmospheric scattering medium surrounding the vehicle. By comparing where light pulse returns are in each channel, a computing system can determine (512) the presence of an atmospheric scattering medium. By looking at the difference in the statistical distribution of several metrics between the two groups, the system could: (1) estimate medium to long range environment factors such as visibility, thus enforcing the operational driving domain; (2) estimate the hardware impairment; and (3) spatially resolve (locate) areas containing atmospheric scattering media for downstream filtering.

公开(公告)号：EP4102251A1

公开(公告)日：2022-12-14

申请号：EP22175897.2

申请日：2022-05-27

申请人： Waymo LLC

发明人： WANG, Yuchi ,  WU, Rui ,  ZHANG, Jingyuan Linda

IPC分类号： G01S7/497 ,  G01S7/48 ,  G01S17/931 ,  G01S7/40 ,  G01S17/42 ,  G01S13/931 ,  G01S17/933 ,  G01S7/41

摘要： Aspects and implementations of the present disclosure address challenges of the existing technology by enabling lidar-assisted identification and characterization of visibility-reducing media (VRM) such as fog, rain, snow, dust in autonomous vehicle applications, using lidar sensing. VRM can be identified and characterized using a variety of techniques, including analyzing a spatial distribution of low-intensity lidar returns, detecting pulse elongation of VRM-returns associated with reflection from VRM, determining intensity of VRM-returns, determining reduction of intensity of returns from various reference objects, and other techniques.