Environment sensing method and apparatus using a wide-angle distance sensor

• Main Authors: Dia, Roxana, Puschini Pascual, Diego, Mottin, Julien, Rakotovao Andriamahefa, Tiana, Heitzmann, Frédéric, Lesecq, Suzanne
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 10.05.2022
• Subjects: ANALOGOUS ARRANGEMENTS USING OTHER WAVES; DETERMINING DISTANCE OR VELOCITY BY USE OF RADIO WAVES; LOCATING OR PRESENCE-DETECTING BY USE OF THE REFLECTION ORRERADIATION OF RADIO WAVES; MEASURING; PHYSICS; RADIO DIRECTION-FINDING; RADIO NAVIGATION; TESTING

An environment sensing method includes the following steps, carried out by a data processor a) defining an occupancy grid comprising a plurality of cells; b) acquiring at least one measurement result from a distance sensor, representative of the distance of one or more nearest targets; and c) computing an occupation probability of the cells of the occupancy grid by applying to the measurement an inverse sensor model stored in a memory device in the form of a data structure representing a plurality of model grids associated to respective distance measurement results, at least some cells of a model grid corresponding to a plurality of contiguous cells of the occupancy grid belonging to a same of a plurality of angular sectors into which the field of view of the distance sensor is divided, and associating a same occupation probability to each one of the plurality of cells. An apparatus programmed or configured for carrying out the environment sensing method and a computer-implemented method of computing an inverse sensor model suitable for carrying out the environment sensing method are also provided.