Patent ID: 11938963
Assignee: AURORA OPERATIONS, INC.
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC B  G | IPC B  G

Claim 22:
23. A method of operating an autonomous vehicle with an autonomous vehicle control system resident in the autonomous vehicle, comprising:
storing, in the autonomous vehicle, offline map data of a portion of an environment, the offline map data defining a plurality of static elements within the portion of the environment, and the offline map data generated from aggregated observations collected by and/or verified by multiple autonomous vehicles in a fleet of autonomous vehicles, validated by an offline process, and deployed to the fleet of autonomous vehicles as a versioned update;
receiving, in the autonomous vehicle, a digital map of the portion of the environment and generated from the offline map data stored in the autonomous vehicle;
determining, based upon sensor data collected using one or more sensors of the autonomous vehicle, observation data associated with one or more observations collected from the environment, the observation data not represented in the offline map data for the portion of the environment, wherein the one or more observations includes at least one perception observation of a stationary sign, construction element, boundary, or blockage region;
augmenting the digital map with the observation data to generate an augmented digital map that represents one or more of the plurality of static elements in addition to the one or more observations, wherein generation of the augmented digital map overrides at least a portion of the offline map data based upon the at least one perception observation of the stationary sign, construction element, boundary, or blockage region;
controlling the autonomous vehicle using the augmented digital map; and
communicating the observation data to a remote live map system for use in controlling one or more other autonomous vehicles in the fleet operating in the environment to cause the one or more other autonomous vehicles to generate respective augmented digital maps that represent one or more of the plurality of static elements in addition to the one or more observations and that override at least a portion of the offline map data based upon the at least one perception observation of the stationary sign, construction element, boundary, or blockage region.