US 12,033,346 B2
Distance representation and encoding
Rasmus Fonseca, Boulder Creek, CA (US); Marin Kobilarov, Baltimore, MD (US); and Lingfeng Zhang, San Jose, CA (US)
Assigned to Zoox, Inc., Foster City, CA (US)
Filed by Zoox, Inc., Foster City, CA (US)
Filed on Feb. 1, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/649,645.
Prior Publication US 2023/0245336 A1, Aug. 3, 2023
Int. Cl. G06T 7/00 (2017.01); G06T 7/20 (2017.01); G06T 7/70 (2017.01)
CPC G06T 7/70 (2017.01) [G06T 7/20 (2013.01); G06T 2207/30241 (2013.01); G06T 2207/30252 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system comprising:
one or more processors; and
one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions executable by the one or more processors, wherein the instructions, when executed, cause the system to perform operations comprising:
receiving sensor data from a sensor associated with an autonomous vehicle in an environment;
associating the sensor data with a grid representation of the environment comprising a plurality of cells;
associating, with a cell and based at least in part on the sensor data, a vector representing a distance and a direction from a center point of the cell to a nearest edge of a surface;
receiving a query for a distance of a query point from a nearest object in the environment;
determining that the cell contains the query point;
determining an intermediate vector representing a distance and a direction from the query point to the center point;
determining, based at least in part on the intermediate vector and the vector, a query point vector representing a distance and a direction from the query point to the nearest edge; and
controlling the autonomous vehicle based at least in part on the query point vector.