Image stitching with an adaptive three-dimensional bowl model of the surrounding environment for surround view visualization

Abstract

In various examples, an environment surrounding an ego-object is visualized using an adaptive 3D bowl that models the environment with a shape that changes based on distance (and direction) to one or more representative point(s) on detected objects. Distance (and direction) to detected objects may be determined using 3D object detection or a top-down 2D or 3D occupancy grid, and used to adapt the shape of the adaptive 3D bowl in various ways (e.g., by sizing its ground plane to fit within the distance to the closest detected object, fitting a shape using an optimization algorithm). The adaptive 3D bowl may be enabled or disabled during each time slice (e.g., based on ego-speed), and the 3D bowl for each time slice may be used to render a visualization of the environment (e.g., a top-down projection image, a textured 3D bowl, and/or a rendered view thereof).