Waymo LLC

Ivan Bogun

David Harrison Silver

Romain Thibaux

Sung Min Park

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for detecting regions of an environment. One of the methods includes receiving a representation of a scene in an environment; processing the representation using a center prediction neural network to generate: (i) features of the scene in the environment, and (ii) a respective center score corresponding to each of a plurality of locations in the environment; selecting, based on the respective center scores, one or more of the plurality of locations; and for each selected location: processing an input comprising the features of the scene in the environment and data specifying the selected location using a geometry prediction neural network to generate a geometry prediction that represents a geometry of the region that is centered at the selected location.

Region detection and geometry prediction

Aspects of the disclosure relate to detecting unmapped drivable road surfaces. In one instance, sensor data captured by a sensor of an autonomous vehicle may be projected onto a grid having a plurality of cells. The plurality of cells may be classified by generating a label for each of the plurality of cells. Each label may identifies whether or not a corresponding cell contains a drivable surface. Ones of the plurality of cells may be clustered based on the labels to form a cluster of cells. An area of the cluster of cells may be compared to a map. Whether the area of the cluster of cells is an unmapped drivable road surface may be determined based on the comparison.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Ivan Bogun