Southwest Research Institute

Kabushiki Kaisha Toyota Jidoshokki

Joseph A Auchter

Yuki Ueda

Takashi Uno

Jerry A Towler

Daniel D'Souza

Robert J Brothers

In an approach to comparing simulated environments for unmanned ground vehicle development and testing, a system includes stored program instructions, the stored program instructions configured to: receive a first simulation scene and a second simulation scene; calculate a first costmap for the first simulation scene and a second costmap for the second simulation scene; calculate a traversability ratio metric comparing the first costmap and the second costmap; calculate a blob size metric comparing the first costmap and the second costmap; calculate an L2 distance between a first plurality of histograms from the first costmap and a second plurality of histograms from the second costmap; and determine whether a first environment of the first simulation scene and a second environment of the second simulation scene are similar based on the traversability ratio metric, the blob size metric, and the L2 distance.

System and method for comparing simulated environments for unmanned ground vehicle development and testing

An autonomous vehicle includes first and second road surface image obtaining devices that are located on a bottom surface of the vehicle body and obtain images of a road surface below the vehicle body, respectively. The autonomous vehicle also includes a memory unit that stores a map image of the road surface, the map image being associated with geographical location information. The autonomous vehicle further includes first and second self-location estimating units that each compare a feature extracted from the image of the road surface obtained by corresponding one of the first and second road surface image obtaining devices with a feature extracted from the map image, thereby estimating a self-location of the autonomous vehicle.

Autonomous vehicle and self-location estimating method in autonomous vehicle

Growing community of inventors

San Antonio, TX, United States of America

Joseph A Auchter