Patent ID: 11900609
Assignee: GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC G

Claim 9:
10. A method performed by an autonomous vehicle, comprising:
converting three-dimensional point clouds outputted by a sensor system of the autonomous vehicle for respective time periods to two-dimensional range images, the two-dimensional range images comprise distance values to objects in an environment nearby the autonomous vehicles during the respective time periods;
defining regions of interest in the two-dimensional range images that frame a traffic light;
detecting regions in the two-dimensional range images having values closer than an expected distance to the traffic light;
selecting a subset of the two-dimensional range images based on the regions of interest and the regions having the values closer than the expected distance to the traffic light such that a remainder of the two-dimensional range images having occluded regions of interest are excluded from the subset of the two-dimensional range images;
identifying an illuminated configuration of the traffic light based on outputs from a camera system of the autonomous vehicle for the respective time periods corresponding to the subset of the two-dimensional range images; and
controlling the autonomous vehicle based on the illuminated configuration of the traffic light.