IP Library Granted Patent US 10,311,312
Granted Patent B2
US 10,311,312 · App. 15/796,769 · Granted Jun 4, 2019

System and method for vehicle occlusion detection

Inventors: Hongkai Yu (San Diego, CA); Zhipeng Yan (San Diego, CA); Panqu Wang (San Diego, CA); Pengfei Chen (San Diego, CA)
Assignee: TuSimple
G06K9/00791G06K9/4604G06K9/6259G06K9/6267G05D1/0221G06K9/209G06K9/78
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 10,311,312
App. No.
15/796,769
Granted
Jun 4, 2019
Kind
B2
Abstract

A system and method for vehicle occlusion detection is disclosed. A particular embodiment includes: receiving training image data from a training image data collection system; obtaining ground truth data corresponding to the training image data; performing a training phase to train a plurality of classifiers, a first classifier being trained for processing static images of the training image data, a second classifier being trained for processing image sequences of the training image data; receiving image data from an image data collection system associated with an autonomous vehicle; and performing an operational phase including performing feature extraction on the image data, determining a presence of an extracted feature instance in multiple image frames of the image data by tracing the extracted feature instance back to a previous plurality of N frames relative to a current frame, applying the first trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance cannot be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data, and applying the second trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance can be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data.

Claims (37)

1. A system comprising:

a data processor; and

an autonomous vehicle occlusion detection system, executable by the data processor, the autonomous vehicle occlusion detection system being configured to perform an autonomous vehicle occlusion detection operation for autonomous vehicles, the autonomous vehicle occlusion detection operation being configured to:

receive training image data from a training image data collection system;

obtain ground truth data corresponding to the training image data;

perform a training phase to train a plurality of classifiers, a first classifier being trained for processing static images of the training image data, a second classifier being trained for processing image sequences of the training image data;

receive image data from an image data collection system associated with an autonomous vehicle; and

perform an operational phase including performing feature extraction on the image data, determine a presence of an extracted feature instance in multiple image frames of the image data by tracing the extracted feature instance back to a previous plurality of N frames relative to a current frame, apply the first trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance cannot be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data, and apply the second trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance can be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the training phase being configured to obtain ground truth data from a manual image annotation or labeling process.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the training phase being configured to obtain ground truth data including labeling data and object relationship information for the training image data, the object relationship information including a status for each of the objects in a frame of the training image data, the status including a state from the group consisting of: 1) occluding another object; (2) occluded by another object; (3) there is no overlap with another object, and (4) in between two objects.

4. The system of claim 1 being configured to associate a plurality of feature dimensions of quantity F with each extracted feature instance processed by the first classifier.

5. The system of claim 1 being configured to associate a plurality of feature dimensions of quantity F*N with each extracted feature instance processed by the second classifier.

6. The system of claim 1 being configured to apply a bounding box to extracted features of the image data, the bounding box being partitioned into a plurality of portions.

7. The system of claim 1 being configured to generate object-level contour detections for each extracted feature of the image data.

8. A computer-implemented vehicle occlusion detection method comprising:

receiving, by use of a data processor, training image data from a training image data collection system;

obtaining ground truth data corresponding to the training image data;

performing, by use of the data processor, a training phase to train a plurality of classifiers, a first classifier being trained for processing static images of the training image data, a second classifier being trained for processing image sequences of the training image data;

receiving image data from an image data collection system associated with an autonomous vehicle; and

performing an operational phase using an in-vehicle data processor installed in the autonomous vehicle, the operational phase including using the in-vehicle data processor to perform feature extraction on the image data, using the in-vehicle data processor to determine a presence of an extracted feature instance in multiple image frames of the image data by tracing the extracted feature instance back to a previous plurality of N frames relative to a current frame, using the in-vehicle data processor to apply the first trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance cannot be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data, and using the in-vehicle data processor to apply the second trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance can be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the training phase includes obtaining ground truth data from a manual image annotation or labeling process.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the training phase includes obtaining ground truth data including labeling data and object relationship information for the training image data, the object relationship information including a status for each of the objects in a frame of the training image data, the status including a state from the group consisting of: 1) occluding another object; (2) occluded by another object; (3) there is no overlap with another object, and (4) in between two objects.

11. The method of claim 8 including associating a plurality of feature dimensions of quantity F with each extracted feature instance processed by the first classifier.

12. The method of claim 8 including associating a plurality of feature dimensions of quantity F*N with each extracted feature instance processed by the second classifier.

13. The method of claim 8 including applying a bounding box to extracted features of the image data, the bounding box being partitioned into a plurality of portions.

14. The method of claim 8 including generating object-level contour detections for each extracted feature of the image data.

15. A non-transitory machine-useable storage medium embodying instructions which, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to:

receive training image data from a training image data collection system;

obtain ground truth data corresponding to the training image data;

perform a training phase to train a plurality of classifiers, a first classifier being trained for processing static images of the training image data, a second classifier being trained for processing image sequences of the training image data;

receive image data from an image data collection system associated with an autonomous vehicle; and

perform an operational phase including performing feature extraction on the image data, determine a presence of an extracted feature instance in multiple image frames of the image data by tracing the extracted feature instance back to a previous plurality of N frames relative to a current frame, apply the first trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance cannot be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data, and apply the second trained classifier to the extracted feature instance if the extracted feature instance can be determined to be present in multiple image frames of the image data.

16. The non-transitory machine-useable storage medium of claim 15 wherein the training phase being configured to obtain ground truth data from a manual image annotation or labeling process.

17. The non-transitory machine-useable storage medium of claim 15 wherein the training phase being configured to obtain ground truth data including labeling data and object relationship information for the training image data, the object relationship information including a status for each of the objects in a frame of the training image data, the status including a state from the group consisting of: 1) occluding another object; (2) occluded by another object; (3) there is no overlap with another object, and (4) in between two objects.

18. The non-transitory machine-useable storage medium of claim 15 being configured to associate a plurality of feature dimensions of quantity F with each extracted feature instance processed by the first classifier.

19. The non-transitory machine-useable storage medium of claim 15 being configured to associate a plurality of feature dimensions of quantity F*N with each extracted feature instance processed by the second classifier.

20. The non-transitory machine-useable storage medium of claim 15 wherein the first classifier is a static classifier and the second classifier is a temporal classifier.

Assignments (3)
CHANGE OF NAME Recorded Dec 3, 2025
From: TUSIMPLE, INC.
To: CREATEAI, INC.
Reel/Frame 073832/0485 →
CHANGE OF NAME Recorded Jan 30, 2020
From: TUSIMPLE
To: TUSIMPLE, INC.
Reel/Frame 051757/0470 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Nov 11, 2018
From: WANG, PANQU; CHEN, PENGFEI; YU, HONGKAI; YAN, ZHIPENG
To: TUSIMPLE
Reel/Frame 047468/0111 →
Continuity (2)
Continuation In Part 15693446 · Aug 31, 2017
Related Publication 20190065864A1 · Feb 28, 2019
Cited By (20)
US 12,198,396 US 12,216,610 US 12,223,428 US 12,236,689 US 12,248,412 US 12,307,350 US 12,346,816 US 12,367,405 US 12,455,739 US 12,462,575 US 12,522,243 US 12,536,131 US 12,554,467 US 12,573,187 US 12,591,240 US 12,618,976 US 12,623,691 US 12,630,105 US 12,688,425 US 12,709,294