Data acquiring method and apparatus applied to driverless vehicle

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10345433-B2
Application number	US-201715410906-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 20, 2017
Priority date	Sep 20, 2016
Publication date	Jul 9, 2019
Grant date	Jul 9, 2019

Abstract

The present application discloses a data acquiring method and apparatus applied to a driverless vehicle. A specific implementation of the method includes: selecting, from at least one laser radar of the driverless vehicle, a laser radar having a highest importance level as a first laser radar; acquiring a start time of a current time window and executing following data processing steps: executing a real-time acquisition and storage operation on point cloud data packets collected by the each of the at least one laser radar after the start time of the current time window; and determining whether any condition in a group of conditions is satisfied; and setting the start time of the current time window to be the current time and continuing to execute the data processing steps, in response to determining that any of the group of conditions is satisfied. This implementation implements the alignment and storage of point cloud data packets collected by at least one laser radar of the driverless vehicle.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A data acquiring method applied to a driverless vehicle, the method comprising:
acquiring parameter information of each of at least one laser radar of the driverless vehicle, the parameter information comprising: an importance level, a collection period, and a number of point cloud data packets to be collected in a collection period;
selecting, from the at least one laser radar, a laser radar having a highest importance level as a first laser radar;
acquiring a start time of a current time window and executing following data processing steps:
executing a real-time acquisition and storage operation on point cloud data packets collected by the each of the at least one laser radar after the start time of the current time window; and
determining whether any condition in a group of conditions is satisfied: a collection period of the first laser radar has elapsed between the start time of the current time window and a current time; and a number of acquired and stored point cloud data packets collected by the first laser radar has reached the number of point cloud data packets to be collected by the first laser radar in a collection period; and

setting the start time of the current time window to be the current time and continuing to execute the data processing steps, in response to determining that any of the group of conditions is satisfied.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the executing the real-time acquisition and storage operation on the point cloud data packets collected by each of the at least one laser radar after the start time of the current time window comprises:
acquiring in real time the point cloud data packets collected by each of the at least one laser radar after the start time of the current time window, and storing the point cloud data packets into a cache pointed by a cache address corresponding to the current time window; and
after the setting the start time of the current time window to be the current time, the method further comprises:
setting a corresponding cache address for the current time window.

3. The method according to claim 1 , wherein after the selecting, from the at least one laser radar, the laser radar having the highest importance level as the first laser radar, the method further comprises:
selecting, from the at least one laser radar, at least one laser radar other than the first laser radar to form a second laser radar set according to the importance level of each of the at least one laser radar; and
the group of conditions further comprises: a number of acquired and stored point cloud data packets collected by each laser radar in the second laser radar set has reached a number of point cloud data packets to be collected by the each laser radar in a collection period.

4. The method according to claim 3 , wherein the selecting, from the at least one laser radar, the at least one laser radar other than the first laser radar to form the second laser radar set according to the importance level of each of the at least one laser radar comprises:
sorting the at least one laser radar according to the importance level, and selecting, in descending order of the importance level from the at least one laser radar, a predetermined number of laser radars other than the first laser radar to form the second laser radar set.

5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the importance level of the laser radar is preset according to information about a position of the laser radar in the driverless vehicle.

6. A data acquiring apparatus applied to a driverless vehicle, the apparatus comprising:
at least one processor; and
a memory storing instructions, which when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:
acquiring parameter information of each of at least one laser radar of the driverless vehicle, the parameter information comprising: an importance level, a collection period, and a number of point cloud data packets to be collected in a collection period;
selecting, from the at least one laser radar, a laser radar having a highest importance level as a first laser radar;
acquiring a start time of a current time window and execute following data processing steps:
executing a real-time acquisition and storage operation on point cloud data packets collected by the each of the at least one laser radar after the start time of the current time window; and
determine whether any condition in a group of conditions is satisfied: a collection period of the first laser radar has elapsed between the start time of the current time window and a current time; and a number of acquired and stored point cloud data packets collected by the first laser radar has reached the number of point cloud data packets to be collected by the first laser radar in a collection period; and

setting the start time of the current time window to be the current time and continuing to execute the data processing steps, in response to determining that any of the group of the conditions is satisfied.

7. The apparatus according to claim 6 , wherein the executing the real-time acquisition and storage operation on the point cloud data packets collected by each of the at least one laser radar after the start time of the current time window comprises:
acquiring in real time the point cloud data packets collected by each of the at least one laser radar after the start time of the current time window, and storing the point cloud data packets into a cache pointed by a cache address corresponding to the current time window; and
after the setting the start time of the current time window to be the current time, the operations further comprises:
setting a corresponding cache address for the current time window.

8. The apparatus according to claim 6 , wherein the operations further comprises:
selecting, from the at least one laser radar, at least one laser radar other than the first laser radar to form a second laser radar set according to the importance level of each of the at least one laser radar; and
the group of conditions further comprises: a number of acquired and stored point cloud data packets collected by each laser radar in the second laser radar set has reached a number of point cloud data packets to be collected by the each laser radar in a collection period.

9. The apparatus according to claim 8 , wherein the selecting, from the at least one laser radar, the at least one laser radar other than the first laser radar to form the second laser radar set according to the importance level of each of the at least one laser radar comprises:
sorting the at least one laser radar according to the importance level, and selecting, in descending order of the importance level from the at least one laser radar, a predetermined number of laser radars other than the first laser radar to form the second laser radar set.

10. The apparatus according to claim 6 , wherein the importance level of the laser radar is preset according to information about a position of the laser radar in the driverless vehicle.

Assignees

• Beijing Baidu Netcom Sci & Tec

Inventors

• He Wei
• Feng Kaiwen
• Deng Chengliang
• Liang Yibing
• Liu Bocong
• Chen Zhuo
• Ma Yu

Classifications

• G01S17/931 Primary

  of land vehicles · CPC title

• G01S7/4808

  Evaluating distance, position or velocity data · CPC title

• G01S17/87

  Combinations of systems using electromagnetic waves other than radio waves · CPC title

• G01S7/4861 Primary

  Circuits for detection, sampling, integration or read-out · CPC title

• G01S17/936

  Physics · mapped topic