US 11,685,408 B1
Driving difficulty heat maps for autonomous vehicles
Xiaoyue Zhao, Saratoga, CA (US); Henning Hohnhold, San Francisco, CA (US); Yin-Hsiu Chen, San Francisco, CA (US); Xiang Gao, Mountain View, CA (US); Ajay Joshi, Mountain View, CA (US); and Kevin Cao, Mountain View, CA (US)
Assigned to WAYMO LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
Filed by Waymo LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
Filed on Jun. 15, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/347,685.
Int. Cl. G07C 5/02 (2006.01); B60W 60/00 (2020.01); G01C 21/00 (2006.01)
CPC B60W 60/005 (2020.02) [G01C 21/3841 (2020.08); G07C 5/02 (2013.01); B60W 2556/40 (2020.02); B60W 2556/45 (2020.02)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of generating a driving difficulty heat map for autonomous vehicles, the method comprising:
inputting, by one or more processors, log data generated by a vehicle being driven in a manual driving mode for a segment of a route into a disengage model in order to generate an output identifying a likelihood of a vehicle driving in an autonomous driving mode requiring a disengage from the autonomous driving mode along the segment of the route, the log data being collected within a geographic area;
generating, by the one or more processors, a grid for the geographic area, the grid including a plurality of cells;
assigning, by the one or more processors, the output to one of the plurality of cells;
using, by the one or more processors, the plurality of cells and assigned output to generate a driving difficulty heat map for the geographic area; and
identifying, by the one or more processors, a geographic area to be excluded from a service area for the autonomous vehicles in real time based on the driving difficulty heat map.