SBIR Phase I: A Passive Alternative to LiDAR for Automotive 3D Ranging

SBIR 第一阶段：用于汽车 3D 测距的激光雷达的无源替代方案

• 批准号: 2015152
• 负责人: Henry Baker
• 金额: $ 22.49万
• 依托单位: EPIImaging, LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-05-15 至 2021-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2015152&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Passive; Alternative; LiDAR

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will advance the development of detection systems for autonomous vehicles. The proposed technology takes advantage of trends in price, performance, and quality of imagers and processors driven by the proliferation of these devices in smartphones. The technologyalso provides key capabilities such as integrated color information, detection over extended depths, scene segmentation and tracking, and better performance in inclement weather or under poor visibility. This leads to improvements in three-dimensional (3D) vision and object modeling that will have significant commercial impact in accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle navigation and assistance. This will lead to higher commuting efficiency, reduced traffic fatalities, reduced traffic congestion, and reduced pollution.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will establish the technical capabilities and advantages of passive sensing image-based multi-camera EPI Epipolar-Plane Imaging (EPI) analysis for autonomous vehicle (AV) ranging. The research objective is to advance the development of EPI analysis and compare it to Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems. The research will extend an existing EPI-based module to incorporate new hardware and software to achieve these results, including accuracy and precision comparable to LiDAR at distances of 200 m and beyond, feature discernment superior to LiDAR, higher levels of semantics in presented range information, and operation in inclement weather and discrete obscuration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这一小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将推动自动驾驶车辆检测系统的开发。这项拟议的技术利用了成像器和处理器在价格、性能和质量方面的趋势，这些趋势是由智能手机中这些设备的激增推动的。该技术还提供了关键功能，如集成颜色信息、跨深度检测、场景分割和跟踪，以及在恶劣天气或低能见度情况下的更好性能。这导致了三维(3D)视觉和物体建模的改进，这将对加快自主和半自动车辆导航和辅助的开发和部署产生重大的商业影响。这将导致更高的通勤效率，减少交通死亡，减少交通拥堵，减少污染。这个小企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将建立基于被动传感图像的多摄像机EPI外极平面成像(EPI)分析用于自动驾驶车辆(AV)测距的技术能力和优势。研究的目的是促进EPI分析的发展，并将其与光探测和测距(LiDAR)系统进行比较。这项研究将扩展现有的基于EPI的模块，纳入新的硬件和软件来实现这些结果，包括在200米及更远的距离上与LiDAR相媲美的精确度和精确度，比LiDAR更好的特征识别能力，提供的范围信息中更高级别的语义，以及在恶劣天气和离散遮挡下的操作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。