Methods and systems for ground segmentation using graph-cuts

Abstract

Systems and methods for segmenting scan data are disclosed. The methods include creating a graph from scan data representing a plurality of points in an environment associated with a ground and one or more objects, where the graph includes a plurality of vertices corresponding to the plurality of points in the environment, a first terminal vertex associated with the ground label, and a second terminal vertex associated with the non-ground label. A unary potential being the cost of assigning a vertex to a ground label or a non-ground label is assigned to each vertex, and a pairwise potential is assigned to each pair of neighboring vertices in the graph as a measure of a cost of assigning different labels. The methods include using the unary the pairwise potentials to identify labels for each point and segmenting the scan data to identify points associated with the ground.