US 11,885,639 B2
Generating scouting objectives
Katharine Patterson, San Francisco, CA (US); Joshua Herbach, San Francisco, CA (US); David Silver, San Carlos, CA (US); and David Margines, Sunnyvale, CA (US)
Assigned to Waymo LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
Filed by Waymo LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
Filed on Aug. 10, 2020, as Appl. No. 16/989,485.
Prior Publication US 2022/0042821 A1, Feb. 10, 2022
Int. Cl. G01C 21/00 (2006.01); G05D 1/00 (2006.01)
CPC G01C 21/3841 (2020.08) [G01C 21/3822 (2020.08); G05D 1/0088 (2013.01); G05D 2201/0213 (2013.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of generating scouting objectives in order to update map information used to control a fleet of vehicles in an autonomous driving mode, the method comprising:
receiving, by one or more processors of one or more server computing devices, a notification from a vehicle of the fleet identifying a feature and a location of the feature;
identifying, by the one or more processors, a first bound for a scouting area based on the location of the feature;
identifying, by the one or more processors, a second bound for the scouting area based on a lane closest to the feature;
generating, by the one or more processors, a scouting objective for the feature based on the first bound and the second bound, wherein the scouting objective defines a scouting task for at least one other vehicle of the fleet to scout for the feature; and
providing, by one or more processors, the scouting objective to the at least one other vehicle in order to enable the at least one other vehicle to capture data at the scouting area.