US 12,072,466 B1
Detecting dark objects in stray light halos
Ryan McMichael, San Francisco, CA (US); Robert Nicholas Moor, San Mateo, CA (US); Sasidhar Saladi, Fremont, CA (US); and Haiming Wang, Fremont, CA (US)
Assigned to Zoox, Inc., Foster City, CA (US)
Filed by Zoox, Inc., Foster City, CA (US)
Filed on Sep. 30, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/491,306.
Int. Cl. G01V 8/20 (2006.01); B60W 30/00 (2006.01); B60W 40/02 (2006.01); G01S 17/931 (2020.01); G02B 27/10 (2006.01)
CPC G01V 8/20 (2013.01) [B60W 30/00 (2013.01); B60W 40/02 (2013.01); G01S 17/931 (2020.01); G02B 27/1013 (2013.01); B60W 2420/408 (2024.01)] 11 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system comprising:
a lens system comprising a plurality of lenses and defining an optical axis;
a dual band-pass filter displaced along the optical axis proximate the plurality of lenses and comprising a visible light passband and a near-infrared light passband;
a beam splitter displaced along the optical axis proximate the dual band-pass filter and positioned such that at least a portion of incident light in a visible spectrum is directed to a visible light sensor and at least a portion of the incident light in a near-infrared spectrum is directed to a near-infrared light sensor, the beam splitter comprising a broadband passband filter;
a processor configured to generate object data comprising: a first subset of the object data
representing an object in an environment based at least in part on a first signal received from the near-infrared light sensor, and
a second subset of the object data representing the object in the environment based at least in part on a second signal received from the visible light sensor,
wherein the first subset of the object data represents a first feature of the object that is unrepresented in the second subset of the object data; and
a vehicle controller configured to control a vehicle based at least in part on the object data.