Minwoo Park

Tae Eun Choe, Jane Wu, Xiaolin Lin et al.

We present an algorithm to detect unseen road debris using a small set of synthetic models. Early detection of road debris is critical for safe autonomous or assisted driving, yet the development of a robust road debris detection model has not been widely discussed. There are two main challenges to building a road debris detector: first, data collection of road debris is challenging since hazardous objects on the road are rare to encounter in real driving scenarios; second, the variability of road debris is broad, ranging from a very small brick to a large fallen tree. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel approach to few-shot learning of road debris that uses semantic augmentation and domain randomization to augment real road images with synthetic models. We constrain the problem domain to uncommon objects on the road and allow the deep neural network, HazardNet, to learn the semantic meaning of road debris to eventually detect unseen road debris. Our results demonstrate that HazardNet is able to accurately detect real road debris when only trained on synthetic objects in augmented images.

Trung Pham, Mehran Maghoumi, Wanli Jiang et al.

Achieving robust and real-time 3D perception is fundamental for autonomous vehicles. While most existing 3D perception methods prioritize detection accuracy, they often overlook critical aspects such as computational efficiency, onboard chip deployment friendliness, resilience to sensor mounting deviations, and adaptability to various vehicle types. To address these challenges, we present NVAutoNet: a specialized Bird's-Eye-View (BEV) perception network tailored explicitly for automated vehicles. NVAutoNet takes synchronized camera images as input and predicts 3D signals like obstacles, freespaces, and parking spaces. The core of NVAutoNet's architecture (image and BEV backbones) relies on efficient convolutional networks, optimized for high performance using TensorRT. More importantly, our image-to-BEV transformation employs simple linear layers and BEV look-up tables, ensuring rapid inference speed. Trained on an extensive proprietary dataset, NVAutoNet consistently achieves elevated perception accuracy, operating remarkably at 53 frames per second on the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin SoC. Notably, NVAutoNet demonstrates resilience to sensor mounting deviations arising from diverse car models. Moreover, NVAutoNet excels in adapting to varied vehicle types, facilitated by inexpensive model fine-tuning procedures that expedite compatibility adjustments.

Aqeel Anwar, Tae Eun Choe, Zian Wang et al.

Detecting a diverse range of objects under various driving scenarios is essential for the effectiveness of autonomous driving systems. However, the real-world data collected often lacks the necessary diversity presenting a long-tail distribution. Although synthetic data has been utilized to overcome this issue by generating virtual scenes, it faces hurdles such as a significant domain gap and the substantial efforts required from 3D artists to create realistic environments. To overcome these challenges, we present ARSim, a fully automated, comprehensive, modular framework designed to enhance real multi-view image data with 3D synthetic objects of interest. The proposed method integrates domain adaptation and randomization strategies to address covariate shift between real and simulated data by inferring essential domain attributes from real data and employing simulation-based randomization for other attributes. We construct a simplified virtual scene using real data and strategically place 3D synthetic assets within it. Illumination is achieved by estimating light distribution from multiple images capturing the surroundings of the vehicle. Camera parameters from real data are employed to render synthetic assets in each frame. The resulting augmented multi-view consistent dataset is used to train a multi-camera perception network for autonomous vehicles. Experimental results on various AV perception tasks demonstrate the superior performance of networks trained on the augmented dataset.