Patent ID: 11861915
Assignee: WAYMO LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC B  G

Claim 0:
1. A method of controlling a vehicle operating in an autonomous driving mode, the method comprising:
receiving, by one or more sensors of a perception system of the vehicle, sensor data associated with objects in an external environment of the vehicle, the sensor data including camera imagery and lidar data;
applying, by one or more processors of a computing system of the vehicle, a generic sign detector to the sensor data to identify whether one or more road signs are present in an external environment of the vehicle;
identifying, by the one or more processors according to the generic sign detector, that a road sign is present in the external environment of the vehicle;
predicting, by the one or more processors according to the generic sign detector, properties of the road sign;
routing, by the one or more processors based on the predicted properties of the road sign, an image of the road sign to one or more selected sign classifiers of a group of sign classifiers to perform a sign type specific evaluation of the image;
routing, by the one or more processors, the image of the road sign to a text and symbol detector to identify any text or symbols in the image;
annotating, by the one or more processors, a sign type to the road sign based on (i) classification results from the sign type specific evaluation by each selected sign classifier and (ii) any text or symbol information identified by the text and symbol detector; and
determining, by the one or more processors based on annotating the sign type, whether to cause the vehicle perform a driving action in the autonomous driving mode.