Photo: Julien Tromeur via Pixabay
Autonomous vehicles have a way to go before they’re safe enough for widespread adoption. But the industry got one step closer to this goal. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have developed a new technique for training self-driving cars to accurately detect obstacles.
Safe SUVs: Learn about the Cadillac XT6 model’s latest recognition from MotorTrend
Meet scene flow
CMU has dubbed the new technique “scene flow.” To understand scene flow, it’s necessary to understand the basics of how AVs detect and interpret information about their surroundings. Most self-driving cars rely on LIDAR-based navigation. This system uses a laser device to generate 3D data about the vehicle’s surroundings.
Per CMU, this data is a cloud of points rather than a set of images. The car’s technology then uses scene flow to determine the speed and trajectory of each 3D point so the vehicle can classify them as pedestrians, objects, or vehicles.
The new CMU method not only helps driverless cars to “see” better, but it also increases their awareness of what they don’t “see.”
Atlanta Might Make a Legal Space for Burnouts and Drag Racing
Why the scene flow technique is so special
The scene flow method is an innovative approach because other methods require that researchers manually label datasets. With scene flow, researchers use unlabeled data which is easier to obtain.
This method is also more effective than alternative techniques in improving the accuracy of AV obstacle detection. Scene flow outperformed the previous top-performing technique, according to Green Car Congress. It improved detection by 10.7 percent for cars, 18.4 percent for buses, 16.7 percent for trailers, 7.4 percent for trucks, and 5.3 percent for pedestrians.
A Protective Pick: Why the 2020 Bolt EV makes a great car for senior drivers
Whitney Russell is a current resident of Dayton, though her spirit can be found beach-bumming in Puerto Rico (the land of her half-Puerto Rican heritage). When not adventuring through the exciting world of car news, she can be found hiking with her husband and their two dogs, motorcycling, visiting her cute nephews and nieces, discovering new memes, reorganizing and/or decorating some corner of the world, researching random things, and escaping into a great movie, poem, or short story. See more articles by Whitney.
