Patent ID: 11900689
Assignee: AURORA OPERATIONS, INC.
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC G

Claim 14:
15. A method implemented by one or more processors of an autonomous vehicle, the method comprising:
determining, based on a pose instance of the autonomous vehicle and a stored mapping of an environment:
that a region of the environment includes a traffic light, and
a configuration that is assigned to the traffic light, the configuration being one of multiple disparate configurations in a taxonomy of configurations, and the configuration defining an orientation of the traffic light and a bulb pattern of the traffic light;

responsive to determining that the region includes the traffic light:
processing an image, that captures the region of the environment that includes the traffic light, to generate predicted output associated with multiple candidate states of the traffic light, wherein the predicted output associated with the multiple candidate states of the given traffic light includes a corresponding numerical measure for each of the multiple candidate states for the configuration that is assigned to the given traffic light, and wherein processing the image to generate the predicted output associated with the multiple candidate states of the traffic light comprises:
selecting, based on the configuration, a machine learning classifier from among a plurality of candidate machine learning classifiers for each of the multiple disparate configurations in the taxonomy of configurations; and
processing, using the machine learning classifier, the image to generate the predicted output associated with the multiple candidate states of the given traffic light;

selecting one of the candidate states as a current state of the traffic light, wherein the selecting the one of the candidate states as the current state of the traffic light is based on the predicted output; and
controlling the autonomous vehicle based on the selected current state of the traffic light.