Patent ID: 11893743
Assignee: AURORA FLIGHT SCIENCES CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 14:
15. A computing system comprising:
one or more processors; and
a memory system comprising one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed by at least one of the one or more processors, cause the computing system to perform operations, the operations comprising:
receiving a first image, wherein the first image is captured by a camera on a vehicle;
detecting a plurality of edges in the first image based at least partially upon a threshold;
connecting the edges, wherein the edges are connected using morphological closing with a square kernel, and wherein the morphological closing uses a kernel having an area from 20 pixels to 50 pixels;
identifying a largest contour in the first image based at least partially upon the connected edges, wherein the largest contour comprises a largest area;
determining a convex hull of the largest contour, wherein the convex hull represents a portion of a ground region in the first image;
generating a second image comprising the convex hull, wherein a plurality of first pixels having a first color in the second image represent the convex hull, and wherein a plurality of second pixels having a second color in the second image do not represent the convex hull;
identifying a bottom-most first pixel in each column in the second image;
converting the second pixels that are below the bottom-most first pixel in each column to first pixels to produce a modified second image, wherein the first pixels in the modified second image represent the ground region, and wherein the second pixels in the modified second image represent a sky region; and
combining at least a portion of the first image and at least a portion of the modified second image to produce a combined image.