This paper presents an experimental study on 3D person localization (i.e. pedestrians, cyclists) in traffic scenes, using monocular vision and LiDAR data. We first analyze the detection performance of two top-ranking methods (PointPillars and AVOD) on the KITTI benchmark, with respect to varying Intersection over Union (IoU) settings and the underlying parameters of 3D bounding box location, extent and orientation. Given that the KITTI dataset contains relatively few 3D person instances, we also consider the new EuroCity Persons 2.5D (ECP2.5D) dataset, which is one order of magnitude larger. We perform domain transfer experiments between the KITTI and ECP2.5D datasets, to examine how these datasets generalize with respect to each other.

This paper presents our research platform Safe VRU for the interaction of self-driving vehicles with Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs, i.e., pedestrians and cyclists). The paper details the design (implemented with a modular structure within ROS) of the full stack of vehicle localization, environment perception, motion planning, and control, with emphasis on the environment perception and planning modules. The environment perception detects the VRUs using a stereo camera and predicts their paths with Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs), which can account for switching dynamics. The motion planner is based on model predictive contouring control (MPCC) and takes into account vehicle dynamics, control objectives (e.g., desired speed), and perceived environment (i.e., the predicted VRU paths with behavioral uncertainties) over a certain time horizon. We present simulation and real-world results to illustrate the ability of our vehicle to plan and execute collision-free trajectories in the presence of VRUs.

This paper proposes a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for cyclist path prediction to learn the effect of contextual cues on the behavior directly in an end- to-end approach, removing the need for any annotations. The proposed RNN incorporates three distinct contextual cues: one related to actions of the cyclist, one related to the location of the cyclist on the road, and one related to the interaction between the cyclist and the egovehicle. The RNN predicts a Gaussian distribution over the future position of the cyclist one second into the future with a higher accuracy, compared to a current state-of-the-art model that is based on dynamic mode annotations, where our model attains an average prediction error of 33 cm one second into the future.

Anticipating future situations from streaming sensor data is a key perception challenge for mobile robotics and automated vehicles. We address the problem of predicting the path of objects with multiple dynamic modes. The dynamics of such targets can be described by a Switching Linear Dynamical System (SLDS). However, predictions from this probabilistic model cannot anticipate when a change in dynamic mode will occur. We propose to extract various types of cues with computer vision to provide context on the target’s behavior, and incorporate these in a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). The DBN extends the SLDS by conditioning the mode transition probabilities on additional context states. We describe efficient online inference in this DBN for probabilistic path prediction, accounting for uncertainty in both measurements and target behavior. Our approach is illustrated on two scenarios in the Intelligent Vehicles domain concerning pedestrians and cyclists, so-called Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). Here, context cues include the static environment of the VRU, its dynamic environment, and its observed actions. Experiments using stereo vision data from a moving vehicle demonstrate that the proposed approach results in more accurate path prediction than SLDS at the relevant short time horizon (1 s). It slightly outperforms a computationally more demanding state-of-the-art method.

We learn motion models for cyclist path prediction on real-world tracks obtained from a moving vehicle, and propose to exploit the local road topology to obtain better predictive distributions. The tracks are extracted from the Tsinghua-Daimler Cyclist Benchmark for cyclist detection, and corrected for vehicle egomotion. Tracks are then spatially aligned to local curves and crossings in the road. We study a standard approach for path prediction in the literature based on Kalman Filters, as well as a mixture of specialized filters related to specific road orientations at junctions. Our experiments demonstrate an improved prediction accuracy (up to 20% on sharp turns) of mixing specialized motion models for canonical directions, and prior knowledge on the road topology. The new track data complements the existing video, disparity and annotation data of the original benchmark, and will be made publicly available.