System for mitigation of sensor veiling glare

Abstract

An autonomous mobile device (AMD) may use an indirect time of flight (iTOF) sensor to acquire depth information about a physical space. This sensor may experience veiling glare in which multipath interference results in incorrect output of false objects that are not actually present in the physical space. A frame of depth data from the iTOF sensor is processed to determine if veiling glare may be present. A frame with possible veiling glare is then filtered at a pixel level to provide filtered depth data by removing or replacing depth data from pixels that may exhibit veiling glare. These pixels are determined to exhibit veiling glare by comparing their amplitude data with amplitude thresholds associated with an observed distance of that pixel and a specified error tolerance. The filtered data may then be used to operate the AMD.