Multi-domain neighborhood embedding and weighting of point cloud data

Abstract

This document describes 'Multi-domain Neighborhood Embedding and Weighting' (MNEW) for use in processing point cloud data, including sparsely populated data obtained from a lidar, a camera, a radar, or combination thereof. MNEW is a process based on a dilation architecture that captures pointwise and global features of the point cloud data involving multi-scale local semantics adopted from a hierarchical encoder-decoder structure. Neighborhood information is embedded in both static geometric and dynamic feature domains. A geometric distance, feature similarity, and local sparsity can be computed and transformed into adaptive weighting factors that are reapplied to the point cloud data. This enables an automotive system to obtain outstanding performance with sparse and dense point cloud data. Processing point cloud data via the MNEW techniques promotes greater adoption of sensor-based autonomous driving and perception-based systems.