US 12,340,514 B2
Rut detection for road infrastructure
Yi-Hsuan Tsai, Santa Clara, CA (US); Sparsh Garg, San Jose, CA (US); Manmohan Chandraker, Santa Clara, CA (US); Samuel Shulter, New York, NY (US); and Vijay Kumar Baikampady Gopalkrishna, Santa Clara, CA (US)
Assigned to NEC Corporation, Tokyo (JP)
Filed by NEC Laboratories America, Inc., Princeton, NJ (US)
Filed on Sep. 6, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/903,383.
Claims priority of provisional application 63/242,062, filed on Sep. 9, 2021.
Prior Publication US 2023/0073055 A1, Mar. 9, 2023
Int. Cl. G06T 7/11 (2017.01)
CPC G06T 7/11 (2017.01) [G06T 2207/20084 (2013.01); G06T 2207/30261 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method for rut detection, comprising:
detecting, by a rut detection system, areas in a road-scene image that include ruts with pixel-wise probability values, wherein a higher value indicates a better chance of being a rut; and
performing at least one of rut repair and vehicle rut avoidance responsive to the pixel-wise probability values,
wherein said detecting step comprises performing neural network-based, pixel-wise semantic segmentation with context information on the road-scene image to distinguish rut pixels from non-rut pixels on a road depicted in the road-scene image.