Object removal using lidar-based classification

Abstract

In scenarios involving the capturing of an environment, it may be desirable to remove temporary objects (e.g., vehicles depicted in captured images of a street) in furtherance of individual privacy and/or an unobstructed rendering of the environment. However, techniques involving the evaluation of visual images to identify and remove objects may be imprecise, e.g., failing to identify and remove some objects while incorrectly omitting portions of the images that do not depict such objects. However, such capturing scenarios often involve capturing a lidar point cloud, which may identify the presence and shapes of objects with higher precision. The lidar data may also enable a movement classification of respective objects differentiating moving and stationary objects, which may facilitate an accurate removal of the objects from the rendering of the environment (e.g., identifying the object in a first image may guide the identification of the object in sequentially adjacent images).