IP Library Granted Patent US 11,475,248
Granted Patent B2
US 11,475,248 · App. 16/175,210 · Granted Oct 18, 2022

Auto-labeling of driving logs using analysis-by-synthesis and unsupervised domain adaptation

Inventors: Adrien David Gaidon (Mountain View, CA); James J. Kuffner, Jr. (Saratoga, CA); Sudeep Pillai (Boston, MA)
Assignee: Toyota Research Institute, Inc.
G06K9/6259G06F30/20G06N3/088G06N5/04G06V20/56G06F16/2365G07C5/02H04L43/04
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 11,475,248
App. No.
16/175,210
Filed
Oct 30, 2018
Granted
Oct 18, 2022
Kind
B2
Art Unit
2446
USPC
706/20
Abstract

Acquiring labeled data can be a significant bottleneck in the development of machine learning models that are accurate and efficient enough to enable safety-critical applications, such as automated driving. The process of labeling of driving logs can be automated. Unlabeled real-world driving logs, which include data captured by one or more vehicle sensors, can be automatically labeled to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs. The automatic labeling can include analysis-by-synthesis on the unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate simulated driving logs, which can include reconstructed driving scenes or portions thereof. The automatic labeling can further include simulation-to-real automatic labeling on the simulated driving logs and the unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs. The automatically labeled real-world driving logs can be stored in one or more data stores for subsequent training, validation, evaluation, and/or model management.

Claims (39)

1. A method of automatically labeling driving logs, the method comprising:

receiving one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs, the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs including data captured by one or more vehicle sensors;

automatically labeling the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs, the automatically labeling including:

analysis-by-synthesis on the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more simulated driving logs, whereby the one or more simulated driving logs include reconstructed driving scenes or portions thereof; and

simulation-to-real automatic labeling on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs; and

storing the one or more labeled real-world driving logs in one or more data stores of labeled driving logs.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more simulated driving logs include photo-realistic renderings of an observed real-world scenario with one or more ground truth labels.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the one or more ground truth labels include semantic segmentation, depth, two-dimensional object detection bounding boxes, three-dimensional object detection bounding boxes, or object class labels.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein analysis-by-synthesis includes using a simulator together with computer vision techniques or computer graphing techniques.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs include camera data, radar data, LIDAR data, or sonar data.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the simulation-to-real automatic labeling on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs includes:

using an unsupervised domain adaptation algorithm on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to learn a model specifically for generating labels for one or more desired tasks;

applying the model to the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to determine task-specific labels; and

applying the task-specific labels to the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate the one or more labeled real-world driving logs.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the simulation-to-real automatic labeling on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs includes:

performing predictive post-processing on the generated one or more labeled real-world driving logs, whereby potentially noisy labels introduced in the simulation-to-real automatic labeling are reduced or corrected.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the predictive post-processing includes spatio-temporal consistencies, geometric consistencies, cross-modal consistencies, and label-specific reasoning.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the predictive post-processing includes temporal reasoning, SLAM label inference, cross-model reasoning, or label-specific reasoning using pre-trained convolutional neural network models.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more labeled real-world driving logs include raw measurements captured by the one or more vehicle sensors and from ground truth labels that have been automatically labeled by the simulation-to-real automatic labeling.

11. The method of claim 1 , further including indexing the one or more labeled real-world driving logs.

12. A system for automatically labeling driving logs, the system comprising:

one or more processors, the one or more processors being programmed to initiate executable operations comprising:

receiving one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs, the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs including data captured by one or more vehicle sensors;

automatically labeling the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs, the automatically labeling including:

analysis-by-synthesis on the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more simulated driving logs, whereby the one or more simulated driving logs include reconstructed driving scenes or portions thereof; and

simulation-to-real automatic labeling on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs; and

storing the one or more labeled real-world driving logs in one or more data stores of labeled driving logs.

13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the one or more simulated driving logs include photo-realistic renderings of an observed real-world scenario along with one or more ground truth labels, and wherein the ground truth labels include semantic segmentation, depth, two-dimensional object detection bounding boxes, three-dimensional object detection bounding boxes, or object class labels.

14. The system of claim 12 , wherein analysis-by-synthesis includes using a simulator together with computer vision techniques or computer graphing techniques.

15. The system of claim 12 , wherein the unlabeled real-world driving logs include camera data, radar data, LIDAR data, or sonar data.

16. The system of claim 12 , wherein the simulation-to-real automatic labeling on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs includes:

using an unsupervised domain adaptation algorithm on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to learn a model specifically for generating labels for one or more desired tasks;

applying the model to the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to determine task-specific labels; and

applying the task-specific labels to the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate the one or more labeled real-world driving logs.

17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the simulation-to-real automatic labeling on the one or more simulated driving logs and the one or more unlabeled real-world driving logs to generate one or more labeled real-world driving logs includes:

performing predictive post-processing on the generated one or more labeled real-world driving logs, whereby potentially noisy labels introduced in the simulation-to-real automatic labeling are reduced or corrected.

18. The system of claim 17 , wherein the predictive post-processing includes spatio-temporal consistencies, geometric consistencies, cross-modal consistencies, and label-specific reasoning.

19. The system of claim 17 , wherein the predictive post-processing includes temporal reasoning, SLAM label inference, cross-model reasoning, or label-specific reasoning using pre-trained convolutional neural network models.

20. The system of claim 12 , wherein the one or more labeled real-world driving logs include raw measurements captured by the one or more vehicle sensors and from ground truth labels that have been automatically labeled by the simulation-to-real automatic labeling.

Assignments (2)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Jan 6, 2023
From: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
To: TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA
Reel/Frame 062295/0471 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Nov 14, 2018
From: GAIDON, ADRIEN DAVID; KUFFNER, JAMES J., JR; PILLAI, SUDEEP
To: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
Reel/Frame 047492/0603 →
Continuity (1)
Related Publication 20200134379A1 · Apr 30, 2020