Image Space Motion Planning Of An Autonomous Vehicle

• Main Authors: Martirosyan, Hayk, Kennedy, Ryan David, Zhu, Jack Louis, Bachrach, Abraham Galton, Bry, Adam Parker, Henry, Peter Benjamin
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 17.08.2023
• Subjects: AEROPLANES; AIRCRAFT; AVIATION; CALCULATING; COMPUTING; CONTROLLING; COSMONAUTICS; COUNTING; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; HELICOPTERS; IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL; MEASURING; MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; NAVIGATION; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY; PHYSICS; REGULATING; SIGNALLING; SURVEYING; SYSTEMS FOR CONTROLLING OR REGULATING NON-ELECTRIC VARIABLES; TESTING; TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS; TRANSPORTING

An autonomous vehicle that is equipped with image capture devices can use information gathered from the image capture devices to plan a future three-dimensional (3D) trajectory through a physical environment. To this end, a technique is described for image-space based motion planning. In an embodiment, a planned 3D trajectory is projected into an image-space of an image captured by the autonomous vehicle. The planned 3D trajectory is then optimized according to a cost function derived from information (e.g., depth estimates) in the captured image. The cost function associates higher cost values with identified regions of the captured image that are associated with areas of the physical environment into which travel is risky or otherwise undesirable. The autonomous vehicle is thereby encouraged to avoid these areas while satisfying other motion planning objectives.