Waymo LLC

Google Inc.

Congcong Li

Junhua Mao

Jiyang Gao

Dragomir Dimitrov Anguelov

Yang Song

Ruichi Yu

Chen Sun

Henrik Kretzschmar

Ruizhongtai Qi

Abhijit S Ogale

David Harrison Silver

Chen Wu

Hang Zhao

Pankaj Chaudhari

Carl Kershaw

Zijian Guo

Victoria Dean

Qian Yu

Alper Ayvaci

Edward Stephen Walker, Jr

Yin Zhou

Benjamin Sapp

Ian James Mahon

Yuning Chai

Yun Jiang

Cordelia Luise Schmid

Ury Zhilinsky

Tian Lan

Xinwei Shi

Nichola Abdo

Zhaoyin Jia

Andre Liang Cornman

Yue Shen

Alexander Gorban

Xiaohan Jin

Jingxiao Zheng

Ting Liu

Sachithra Madhawa Hemachandra

Charles Joseph Rosenberg

Xu Chen

Kevin Patrick Murphy

Kang Li

Kunlong Gu

Lo Po Tsui

Zhishuai Zhang

David Lee

Dillon Cower

Huayi Zeng

Yukai Liu

Longlong Jing

Xiaowei Li

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for estimating a 3-D pose of an object of interest from image and point cloud data. In one aspect, a method includes obtaining an image of an environment; obtaining a point cloud of a three-dimensional region of the environment; generating a fused representation of the image and the point cloud; and processing the fused representation using a pose estimation neural network and in accordance with current values of a plurality of pose estimation network parameters to generate a pose estimation network output that specifies, for each of multiple keypoints, a respective estimated position in the three-dimensional region of the environment.

Multi-modal 3-D pose estimation

A system obtains scene context data characterizing the environment. The scene context data includes data that characterizes a trajectory of an agent in a vicinity of a vehicle up to a current time point. The system identifies a plurality of initial target locations, and generates, for each of a plurality of target locations that each corresponds to one of the initial target locations, a respective predicted likelihood score that represents a likelihood that the target location will be an intended final location for a future trajectory of the agent. For each target location in a first subset of the target locations, the system generates a predicted future trajectory for the agent given that the target location is the intended final location for the future trajectory. The system further selects, as likely future trajectories of the agent, one or more of the predicted future trajectories.

Agent trajectory prediction using target locations

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for predicting three-dimensional object locations from images. One of the methods includes obtaining a sequence of images that comprises, at each of a plurality of time steps, a respective image that was captured by a camera at the time step; generating, for each image in the sequence, respective pseudo-lidar features of a respective pseudo-lidar representation of a region in the image that has been determined to depict a first object; generating, for a particular image at a particular time step in the sequence, image patch features of the region in the particular image that has been determined to depict the first object; and generating, from the respective pseudo-lidar features and the image patch features, a prediction that characterizes a location of the first object in a three-dimensional coordinate system at the particular time step in the sequence.

Three-dimensional location prediction from images

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for searching an autonomous vehicle sensor data repository. One of the methods includes maintaining a collection of sensor samples and one or more embeddings of each sensor sample. Each sensor sample is generated from sensor data at multiple time steps and characterizes an environment at each of the multiple time steps. Each embedding corresponds to a respective portion of the sensor sample and has been generated by an embedding neural network. A query specifying a query portion of a query sensor sample is received. A query embedding corresponding to the query portion of the query sensor sample is generated through the embedding neural network. A plurality of relevant sensor samples that have embeddings that are closest to the query embedding are identified as characterizing similar scenarios to the query portion of the query sensor sample.

Searching an autonomous vehicle sensor data repository based on context embedding

Disclosed herein are neural networks for generating target classifications for an object from a set of input sequences. Each input sequence includes a respective input at each of multiple time steps, and each input sequence corresponds to a different sensing subsystem of multiple sensing subsystems. For each time step in the multiple time steps and for each input sequence in the set of input sequences, a respective feature representation is generated for the input sequence by processing the respective input from the input sequence at the time step using a respective encoder recurrent neural network (RNN) subsystem for the sensing subsystem that corresponds to the input sequence. For each time step in at least a subset of the multiple time steps, the respective feature representations are processed using a classification neural network subsystem to select a respective target classification for the object at the time step.

Recurrent neural network classifier

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for searching an autonomous vehicle sensor data repository. One of the methods includes maintaining a collection of sensor samples and, for each sensor sample, an embedding of the sensor sample; receiving a request specifying a query sensor sample, wherein the query sensor sample characterizes a query environment region; and identifying, from the collection of sensor samples, a plurality of relevant sensor samples that characterize similar environment regions to the query environment region, comprising: processing the query sensor sample through the embedding neural network to generate a query embedding; and identifying, from sensor samples in a subset of the sensor samples in the collection, a plurality of sensor samples that have embeddings that are closest to the query embedding.

Searching an autonomous vehicle sensor data repository

Aspects of the subject matter disclosed herein include methods, systems, and other techniques for training, in a first phase, an object classifier neural network with a first set of training data, the first set of training data including a first plurality of training examples, each training example in the first set of training data being labeled with a coarse-object classification; and training, in a second phase after completion of the first phase, the object classifier neural network with a second set of training data, the second set of training data including a second plurality of training examples, each training example in the second set of training data being labeled with a fine-object classification.

Neural networks for coarse- and fine-object classifications

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for associating a new measurement of an object surrounding a vehicle with a maintained track. One of the methods includes receiving an object track for a particular object, receiving a new measurement characterizing a new object at a new time step, and determining whether the new object is the same as the particular object, comprising: generating a representation of the new object at the new and preceding time steps; generating a representation of the particular object at the new and preceding time steps; processing a first network input comprising the representations using a first neural network to generate an embedding of the first network input; and processing the embedding of the first network input using a second neural network to generate a predicted likelihood that the new object and the particular object are the same.

Geo-motion and appearance aware data association

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for generating rare pose data. One of the methods includes obtaining a three-dimensional model of a dynamic object, wherein the dynamic object has multiple movable elements that define a plurality of poses of the dynamic object. A plurality of template poses of the dynamic object are used to generate additional poses for the dynamic object including varying angles of one or more key joints of the dynamic object according to the three-dimensional model. Point cloud data is generated for the additional poses generated for the dynamic object.

Rare pose data generation

Systems, methods, devices, and techniques for generating object-heading estimations. In one example, methods include actions of receiving sensor data representing measurements of an object that was detected within a proximity of a vehicle; processing the sensor data with one or more preliminary heading estimation subsystems to respectively generate one or more preliminary heading estimations for the object; processing two or more inputs with a second heading estimation subsystem to generate a refined heading estimation for the object, the two or more inputs including the one or more preliminary heading estimations for the object; and providing the refined heading estimation for the object to an external processing system.

Multi-stage object heading estimation

Some aspects of the subject matter disclosed herein include a system implemented on one or more data processing apparatuses. The system can include an interface configured to obtain, from one or more sensor subsystems, sensor data describing an environment of a vehicle, and to generate, using the sensor data, (i) one or more first neural network inputs representing sensor measurements for a particular object in the environment and (ii) a second neural network input representing sensor measurements for at least a portion of the environment that encompasses the particular object and additional portions of the environment that are not represented by the one or more first neural network inputs; and a convolutional neural network configured to process the second neural network input to generate an output, the output including a plurality of feature vectors that each correspond to a different one a plurality of regions of the environment.

Object classification using extra-regional context

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for generating a spatio-temporal embedding of a sequence of point clouds. One of the methods includes obtaining a temporal sequence comprising a respective point cloud input corresponding to each of a plurality of time points, each point cloud input comprising point cloud data generated from sensor data captured by one or more sensors of a vehicle at the respective time point; processing each point cloud input using a first neural network to generate a respective spatial embedding that characterizes the point cloud input; and processing the spatial embeddings of the point cloud inputs using a second neural network to generate a spatio-temporal embedding that characterizes the point cloud inputs in the temporal sequence.

Spatio-temporal embeddings

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for processing point cloud data using spatio-temporal-interactive networks.

Spatio-temporal-interactive networks

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Congcong Li