Method for classifying objects in automotive-grade radar signals - Patents.com

Abstract

The method includes acts of collecting radar signals reflected from objects within a field of view. A three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube is formed from the radar signals. The three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube includes distinct bins having radar intensity values ​​that characterize angles and ranges for particular velocities. Point-pillar subcubes are selected from the three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube. Each point-pillar subcube includes a predefined range surrounding a high energy peak in the range-angle dimensions and the entire range in the velocity vector. The point-pillar subcubes are processed to compress, decompress, detect, classify, or track objects within the field of view.

Description

[Technical Field]

[0001] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 155,508, filed March 2, 2021, the contents of which are incorporated by reference. This application is also related to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 123,403, entitled "METHOD, APPARATUS AND RADAR SYSTEMS FOR TRACKING OBJECTS," filed December 9, 2020, and U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 143,154, entitled "METHOD FOR DETECTING OBJECTS IN AUTOMOTIVE-GRADE RADAR SIGNALS," filed January 29, 2021, both of which are incorporated by reference herein.

[0002] This disclosure relates to techniques for classifying objects in automotive-grade radar signals. More specifically, this disclosure describes the use of point pillars to better classify objects within a radar scene. [Background technology]

[0003] An autonomous vehicle (AV) is a vehicle configured to navigate roads based on sensor signals output by sensors in the AV, where the AV navigates roads without human input. The AV is configured to identify and track objects (such as vehicles, pedestrians, bicycles, stationary objects, etc.) based on the sensor signals output by sensors in the AV, and to perform driving maneuvers (such as accelerating, decelerating, turning, stopping, etc.) based on the identified and tracked objects.

[0004] Advances in sensing technologies (e.g., object detection and position tracking), control algorithms, and data structures are increasing the use of automation in the operation of road vehicles such as cars and trucks. The combination of various enabling technologies such as adaptive cruise control (ACC), lane keeping assistance (LKA), electronic power assist steering (EPAS), adaptive front steering, park assist, antilock braking (ABS), traction control, electronic stability control (ESC), blind spot detection, GPS and map databases, vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and other technologies allows vehicles to operate autonomously (i.e., with little or no driver intervention).

[0005] In the field of autonomous or semi-autonomous operation of vehicles, such as aircraft, ships, and land vehicles, particularly manned or unmanned vehicles, sensing the vehicle's surroundings as well as tracking objects around the vehicle may be considered important for advanced functionality, which may range from driver assistance systems at various stages of autonomy to fully autonomous driving of the vehicle.

[0006] In certain environments, several different types of sensors are used to sense the vehicle's surroundings, such as monocular or stereoscopic cameras, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors, and radio detection and ranging (radar) sensors, etc. Different sensor types have different characteristics that can be utilized for different tasks.

[0007] Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to aspects of processing measurement data in radar systems, which can reduce computationally intensive fusion of sensor data (e.g., range, angle, and velocity), which is particularly useful when one parameter array needs to be filled before processing another parameter array, such as range or velocity.

[0008] Radar systems typically provide measurement data, in particular range, Doppler, and / or angle measurements (azimuth and / or elevation) in the radial direction with high precision, which allows accurate measurement of the (radial) distance and (radial) velocity between different reflecting points and the (respective) antenna of the radar system within the radar system's field of view.

[0009] A radar system transmits (emits) a radar signal within the radar system's field of view. The radar signal is reflected by objects within the radar system's field of view and received by the radar system. The transmitted signal is, for example, a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) signal. Radial distance is measured by utilizing the radar signal's travel time, and radial velocity is measured by utilizing the frequency shift caused by the Doppler effect.

[0010] By repeatedly transmitting and receiving radar signals, a radar system can observe the radar system's field of view over time by providing measurement data comprising multiple, consecutive radar frames.

[0011] The individual radar frames may be, for example, range-azimuth frames or range-Doppler azimuth frames. If elevation data is available, range-Doppler azimuth-elevation frames are processed.

[0012] In each of multiple radar frames, multiple reflection points forming a cloud of reflection points may be detected. However, the reflection points or point clouds in a radar frame do not themselves contain semantic meaning. Therefore, semantic segmentation of the radar frames is necessary to evaluate ("understand") the situation around the vehicle.

[0013] Radar frame segmentation means that a meaning is assigned to a single reflection point within each radar frame. For example, a reflection point may be assigned to the background of the scene, the foreground of the scene, a stationary object such as a building, a wall, a parked vehicle or part of the road, and / or a moving object such as another vehicle, a bicycle, and / or a pedestrian in the scene.

[0014] Generally, radar systems observe specular reflections of the transmitted signal emitted from the radar system because sensed objects tend to have reflective characteristics smoother than the (modulated) wavelength of the transmitted signal. Thus, the acquired radar frame does not contain a continuous area representing a single object, but rather single prominent reflection points (such as the edge of a bumper) distributed throughout the area of ​​the radar frame.

[0015] Radar data form a three-dimensional complex-valued array (also known as a radar cube) with dimensions corresponding to azimuth angle (angle), radial velocity (Doppler), and radial distance (range). The magnitude of each angular Doppler range bin characterizes the amount of energy the radar sensor sees as coming from that point in space (angle and range) for that radial velocity.

[0016] The problem in the art arises from the sheer amount of energy data that fills the cube, making processing the data in a real-time environment impossible. Solutions currently found in the art involve processing one dimension (i.e., parameter) at a time. However, this is not useful for certain applications, such as 3D cube processing. Furthermore, previous efforts have tended to discard data that could be useful during object classification.

[0017] Object classification is typically performed on an object list where Doppler information is lost. Richer information is obtained by clustering multiple detections as "objects." "Features" are extracted from the object list, and classification is performed on the extracted features. Due to limited bandwidth between the radar unit and the central computer, it was not practical to utilize the full velocity information for the classification task.

[0018] Therefore, there is a need in the art for improved techniques for preserving data during classification of objects. Summary of the Invention [Means for solving the problem]

[0019] The method includes the acts of collecting radar signals reflected from objects within a field of view. A three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube is formed from the radar signals. The three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube includes individual bins having radar intensity values ​​that characterize the angle and range for a particular velocity. Point-pillar subcubes are selected from the three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube. Each point-pillar subcube includes a predefined range surrounding a high-energy peak in the range-angle dimension and the entire range in the velocity vector. The point-pillar subcubes are processed to compress, decompress, detect, classify, and track objects within the field of view.

[0020] The present disclosure is best understood by reading the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. It is emphasized that, in accordance with standard industry practice, various features are not necessarily drawn to scale and are used for illustrative purposes only. Where a scale is indicated, either explicitly or implicitly, it provides an illustrative example only. In other embodiments, the dimensions of various features may be arbitrarily increased or decreased for clarity of discussion. Similarly, for clarity and conciseness, not every component may be labeled in every drawing.

[0021] For a more complete understanding of the nature and advantages of the present invention, reference should be had to the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. [Brief explanation of the drawings]

[0022] [Figure 1A] FIG. 1 illustrates an example radar chirp as a function of time, as known in the art. [Figure 1B] FIG. 1 illustrates an example radar chirp as a function of time, as known in the art. [Figure 2] FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary automotive radar system, according to some embodiments. [Figure 3] FIG. 1 illustrates a frequency difference in exemplary transmit and receive radar chirps, according to some embodiments. [Figure 4] FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary embedded two-dimensional range array, according to some embodiments. [Figure 5A] FIG. 10 illustrates the creation of a velocity range array from a chirp index range array according to some embodiments. [Figure 5B] FIG. 10 illustrates the creation of a velocity range array from a chirp index range array according to some embodiments. [Figure 6] FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary antenna array used to calculate angles, according to some embodiments. [Figure 7]FIG. 1 illustrates a processing method chain in an exemplary prior art radar system. [Figure 8] FIG. 2 illustrates a processing method chain in an exemplary radar system, according to one embodiment of the present invention. [Figure 9] FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary subcube in a range-angle-velocity radar cube, according to some embodiments. [Figure 10] FIG. 10 illustrates point-pillar selection using sub-thresholds in a range-angle-velocity radar cube, according to some embodiments. [Figure 11] FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary method for point-pillar based classification in automotive-grade radar, according to some embodiments. [Figure 12] FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary method for point-pillar based auto-encoding in automotive-grade radar, according to some embodiments. [Figure 13] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an exemplary radar system, according to some embodiments. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0023] This disclosure relates to techniques for data compression in automotive-grade radar signals. More specifically, this disclosure describes using point-pillars to compress radar cube data while preserving velocity vectors associated with range-angle spaces around objects, groups, and clusters. The results can be used for automatic encoding or classification in radar systems and environments.

[0024] The following description and drawings describe in detail certain exemplary implementations of the present disclosure and illustrate some exemplary ways in which various principles of the present disclosure may be practiced. However, the illustrative examples do not exhaust the many possible embodiments of the present disclosure. Other objects, advantages, and novel features of the present disclosure will be described hereinafter with reference to the drawings.

[0025] While this disclosure generally relates to millimeter wave sensing, other wavelengths and applications are within the scope of the present invention. Specifically, the present method relates to a sensing technology known as frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar, which is very popular in the automotive and industrial sectors.

[0026] FMCW radar measures the range, velocity, and angle of arrival of objects ahead. At the heart of FMCW radar is a signal called a chirp. Figures 1A and 1B show an example radar chirp as a function of time, as known in the art.

[0027] A chirp is a sinusoid or sine wave whose frequency increases linearly with time. Figure 1A shows this as an amplitude versus time, or At, plot. As shown in Figure 1B, a chirp begins as a sine wave with frequency fc, gradually increases in frequency, and eventually reaches frequency fc plus B, where B is the bandwidth of the chirp. The frequency of a chirp increases linearly with time. Therefore, an ft plot has a straight line with slope S.

[0028] A chirp is therefore a continuous wave whose frequency is linearly modulated, hence the term Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave, or FMCW for short.

[0029] Figure 2 shows an exemplary automotive radar system according to some embodiments. It is represented as a simplified block diagram of an FMCW radar with a single TX antenna and a single RX antenna. In one or more embodiments, the radar operates as follows: A synthesizer generates a chirp. The chirp is transmitted by the TX antenna. The chirp is then reflected from an object, such as a car. The reflected chirp is received at the RX antenna. The RX and TX signals are mixed in a mixer.

[0030] The resulting signal is called the intermediate (IF) signal. The IF signal is prepared for signal processing by low-pass (LP) filtering and sampled using an analog to digital converter (ADC). The importance of mixers will be explained in more detail below.

[0031] 3 illustrates the frequency difference in an exemplary transmit and receive radar chirp, according to some embodiments. In one or more embodiments, this difference is estimated using a mixer. As known in the art, a mixer has two inputs and one output. If two sinusoids are input to the two input ports of the mixer, the output of the mixer will also be a sinusoid.

[0032] The instantaneous frequency of the output is equal to the difference between the instantaneous frequencies of the two input sinusoids. Therefore, the frequency of the output at any time is equal to the difference between the input frequencies of the two time-varying sinusoids at that time. Tau, τ, represents the round-trip delay in time from the radar to the object and back. It can also be expressed as twice the distance to the object divided by the speed of light. A single object in front of the radar will generate an IF signal with a constant frequency given by S²d / c.

[0033] 4 shows two exemplary range matrices embedded by radar frames according to some embodiments. The radar frame (left) has a time TF and comprises multiple chirps 1 through N, each separated in time by Tc.

[0034] Each row corresponds to one chirp. That is, there is one row in the chirp index for each chirp, i.e., N rows for N chirps. Each box in a particular row represents one ADC sample. Therefore, if each chirp is sampled M times, there will be M columns in the matrix. Next, we will discuss the transformation of the data matrix in the range and rate matrices. The described case, with range measurements corresponding to the fast time axis and Doppler for the slow time axis, applies to chirp sequences with chirps of the same start frequency and length. Other chirp sequences, such as those with increasing start frequencies, provide a fast time axis corresponding to coarse range and a slow time axis corresponding to finer range resolution and Doppler. The disclosed techniques can be applied to different chirp sequences and the resulting fast and slow time diagrams. For simplicity, the following description uses range for the fast time axis and Doppler for the slow time axis, but the disclosed techniques can be applied to any fast and slow time representation.

[0035] FIG. 5A illustrates the creation of a chirp range matrix from a prior data matrix, according to some embodiments. As previously mentioned, each row corresponds to a sample from a particular chirp. To determine the range, a range-FFT is performed on each row. A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence or its inverse (IDFT). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in the frequency domain, and vice versa.

[0036] Applying a range FFT resolves an object in range. The x-axis is the frequency corresponding to the range FFT bins. However, because range is proportional to the IF frequency, we can plot this directly as the range axis. Thus, Figure 5A is a matrix of chirps, where each chirp has an array of frequency bins. Following the discussion above, these bins correspond directly to ranges via the IF.

[0037] Figure 5B shows the creation of a velocity range matrix from the previous chirp index range matrix, according to some embodiments. A Doppler-FFT is performed along the columns of these range FFT results shown in Figure 5A. This resolves the object in the velocity dimension.

[0038] Figure 5B shows two objects moving at two different speeds in the third range bin. Similarly, there are three objects moving at three different speeds in the eighth range bin. Note that these are accurate to a fixed range angle. Angle determination will now be described in more detail.

[0039] Figure 6 shows an exemplary antenna array used to calculate angles, according to some embodiments. Angle estimation requires at least two receiver (RX) antennas. The difference in the distance of an object to each of these antennas is used to estimate distance. The transmit (TX) antenna transmits a signal that is a chirp, which is reflected from the object, with one ray heading from the object to the first RX antenna and another ray heading from the object to the second RX antenna.

[0040] In this example shown in Figure 6, the ray to the second RX antenna must travel a little further: an additional distance of delta d. This additional distance introduces an additional phase of omega equal to 2pi delta d by lambda. This is therefore the phase difference between the signal at this antenna and the signal at this antenna.

[0041] 7 shows a processing method chain in an exemplary radar system, according to some embodiments. Radar processing 700 begins with sampling radar data, typically in response to a transmitted chirp. In one or more embodiments, analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) samples arrive at 1.6 Gb / s.

[0042] Once the samples are organized, a 3D FFT is performed on range, angle, and velocity. The result is a 3D radar cube. The radar cube comprises radar intensity as a function of range, angle, and velocity. In some embodiments, radar intensity is energy associated with a position in space and time. In other embodiments, radar intensity may comprise phase information in addition to or separate from amplitude information. The cube is divided into bins. Thus, each bin contains a radar intensity value.

[0043] During the detection step 702, a set or point cloud is generated (704). From these, a threshold value can be determined. In other embodiments, the threshold value is already predetermined. In either case, the state of the art applies a threshold value such that intensities below this value are ignored. This is known in the art as background. However, the inventors of the present disclosure recognize that some of this background may contain useful information that can be used to identify and classify objects.

[0044] One advantage of the disclosed technique is that it captures enough background data to effectively perform object classification, while at the same time not processing large amounts of data. In one or more embodiments, portions of the low intensity regions surrounding high intensity regions are preserved. This constitutes the point clustering step of the present embodiment, which will now be described in more detail.

[0045] Figure 8 shows a processing method chain in an exemplary radar system, according to some embodiments. In this embodiment, background subtraction by some type of thresholding is still performed, as in the previous embodiment. Points are extracted from the remaining intensities. However, the radar cube is preserved. More specifically, the ADC samples are subjected to a range-Doppler-angle FFT to generate radar cube 800.

[0046] Point-pillars can then be extracted (802) and used to extract relevant detections, while preserving all perceptually relevant features in the extraction process. The point-pillars are subject to clustering (points are clustered into common objects), tracking (object trajectories), and classification (applying semantic labels to the objects).

[0047] 9 illustrates an exemplary range-angle-velocity radar cube according to some embodiments. As one skilled in the art can appreciate, the matrices can be assembled to result in a 3D radar cube with range-angle-velocity axes. The methods disclosed herein describe techniques for processing and interpreting radar data extracted from one or more 77-GHz DigiMMIC (FMCW) radar sensors mounted on a moving vehicle, although other frequencies and applications are beyond the scope of this disclosure.

[0048] Radar cube data is in the form of a three-dimensional complex-valued array with dimensions corresponding to azimuth angle (angle), radial velocity (Doppler), and radial distance (range). The magnitude in each angle-Doppler-range bin is taken to represent the amount of energy the radar sensor sees coming from that point in space (angle and range) relative to its radial velocity. For demonstration purposes, a linear antenna array oriented parallel to the ground is assumed.

[0049] The radar cube contains a large amount of raw data, typically several megabytes (MB), which poses a computational challenge for the classifier. It is assumed that some type of detection and foreground extraction has already been performed on the radar cube.

[0050] Foreground extraction can be performed by various methods to suppress noise and artifacts and extract salient regions of the radar cube. Most, if not all, require estimating a background model and removing it in some way, or creating a mask through element-wise multiplication that emphasizes the desired bins and suppresses others.

[0051] CFAR Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) thresholding is perhaps the best known and most well-studied technique and involves estimating a background model by local averaging. Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) detection refers to a general form of adaptive algorithm used in radar systems to detect target returns against a background of noise, clutter, and interference.

[0052] The underlying idea is that noise statistics can be non-uniform across the array. CA-CFAR (cell averaging) calculates a moving average while excluding regions (guard cells) at the center of the averaging window to avoid including the desired object in the background estimate. OS-CFAR (order statistics) performs the same calculation, but uses percentile operations instead of averaging. The background model (an estimate of the background value in each bin) b ijk Considering the foreground, for some factor α that controls the amount of background suppression, the foreground can be estimated as follows:

[0053]

number

[0054] In some embodiments, CFAR is used for detection, however, other schemes may be utilized, such as cell averaging (CA-CFAR), maximum CFAR (GO-CFAR) and minimum CFAR (LO-CFAR), or other suitable means.

[0055] In one or other embodiments, micro-Doppler is used for classification. However, in conventional peak detection, some of the surrounding low-energy regions are lost due to background masking. Instead, the inventors of the present disclosure propose to retain the regions adjacent to the peak, as these are useful for classification. Specifically, for any range-angle bin that contains the peak (and its vicinity), most or all velocities (the entire range) are selected.

[0056] A velocity signature is a characteristic pattern of an object. For example, a tire moving perpendicular to a radar array has a definitive velocity signature. Because the center moves tangentially, there is little Doppler velocity, but the annulus still exhibits a unique sequence of velocities. Velocity signatures can also be used to identify objects by pattern matching these velocities with predetermined velocities, and velocity signatures can also be learned by neural networks.

[0057] Returning to FIG. 9, a point-pillar is selected as the subcube. The subcube is selected to sufficiently surround the high-energy peak in the range-angle dimension while selecting the entire range in the velocity vector. The result is a subcube, i.e., a rectangular point-pillar. While this embodiment is a parallelepiped point-pillar, any 3D shape can be used. Furthermore, this same method can be applied to radar cubes with four or more dimensions. Similarly, the entire velocity array can be utilized to provide accurate classification of objects.

[0058] 10 illustrates the use of sub-thresholding in a range-angle-velocity radar cube to select point-pillars, according to some embodiments. As with the previous embodiment, it was assumed that some type of detection and foreground extraction had already been performed on the radar cube. In this embodiment, sub-thresholding point-pillars are used to select pillars.

[0059] Sub-thresholding is determined and performed in the following manner: The strongest intensity peaks are identified. These can be identified using any of the extraction methods described above or any other suitable detection technique. Other maxima can be identified within a predetermined neighborhood in the range-angle space. In some embodiments, the neighborhood may be a fixed distance from the strongest peak, while in other embodiments, more complex functions, for example, Gaussian functions, can be used to determine whether a local maximum is part of the neighborhood of the strongest peak.

[0060] In one or more embodiments, the subthreshold is a percentage of the intensity of the strongest peak, e.g., 50%. In other embodiments, the subthreshold is a function of distance from the strongest peak and / or a predetermined parameter. For example, the subthreshold may be a multiplicative inverse function with boundary conditions or e -x When sub-thresholding is applied, peaks are clustered together to form sub-threshold pillars.

[0061] 10, it can be seen that a subthreshold point pillar comprises the range-angle of the strongest peak with continuous maxima and a heterogeneous neighborhood exhibiting intensity above the subthreshold. The entire velocity vector associated with the point-pillar is saved and used later in the classification.

[0062] The sub-threshold and sub-cube point-pillar choices are not mutually exclusive. They can be combined. They can also be supplemented with any other suitable pillar section method. Furthermore, the range-angle shape can be somewhat arbitrary, as any 2D shape with corresponding velocity is beyond the scope of this disclosure.

[0063] 11 shows an exemplary pipeline for point-pillar-based classification in automotive-grade radar, according to some embodiments. Despite the significant data reduction achieved by extracting point-pillars from the radar cube, the remaining data can still be intractable, since it typically contains the entire velocity vector for each point-pillar. A first use of intractable point-pillars is in applications for direct object classification.

[0064] This application recognizes that velocity vectors tend to be sparse. Therefore, the velocity data can be reduced by the application of pointwise operators. Pointwise is used to indicate that each value f(x) is affected by some function f. Pointwise operations apply an operation to the function values ​​point-by-point separately.

[0065] In this embodiment, this is called pointwise feature quantification. In other embodiments, reduction can be achieved convolutionally, for example, using neural networks. In deep learning, convolutional neural networks (CNNs, or ConvNets) are a class of deep neural networks that are most commonly applied to analyzing visual images. They are also known as shift-invariant or space-invariant artificial neural networks (SIANNs) based on their shared weight architecture and translation invariance properties.

[0066] CNNs are regularized versions of multilayer perceptrons. Multilayer perceptrons typically refer to fully connected networks, meaning that each neuron in one layer is connected to every neuron in the next layer. Because these networks are "fully connected," they tend to overfit the data. A common method of regularization involves adding some form of weight magnitude measure to the loss function. CNNs take a different approach to regularization, taking advantage of hierarchical patterns in the data to assemble more complex patterns using smaller, simpler patterns. Thus, on the connectivity and complexity scale, CNNs are at the lower end.

[0067] As a result, the size of the point-pillar is significantly reduced. In this embodiment, two layers of compression are applied. Of course, any number of layers can be used. Further reduction can be achieved by applying a global feature quantification that is input to the classifier. This allows the classifier to more easily identify the type of object the radar is interested in, such as a car, pedestrian, bicycle, or simple clutter.

[0068] In some embodiments, a pointwise operator can be applied to each range-angle bin, while in other embodiments it can be a convolutional featurization, which is a convolution kernel applied across multiple range, angle, and Doppler bins. The importance of dimensionality reduction is that meaningful data is preserved for classification.

[0069] The inventors of this disclosure discovered that some of the interpretability of the data may be lost in the classification state. As a result, the pipeline recovers the features, which results in the reconstruction of the uncompressed point-pillar subcube. Figure 12 is an example pipeline for point-pillar-based auto-encoding in automotive-grade radar, according to some embodiments.

[0070] In this embodiment, full velocity vector compression involves Doppler dimensionality reduction by applying two layers of point-wise feature quantification. Later in the pipeline, we recover the Doppler dimension by applying two layers of feature recovery. This point-pillar-based auto-encoding serves to compress the vector for transmission to the central classifier while maintaining fidelity so that interpretability is maximized.

[0071] In some embodiments, the data in the point-pillars is compressed and sent over a bus to another computational structure that performs the actual classification.

[0072] 13 is a schematic diagram of an exemplary radar system according to some embodiments, including a transmitter, a duplexer, a low-noise amplifier, a mixer, a local oscillator, a matched filter, an IF filter, a second detector, a video amplifier, and a display.

[0073] Having thus described several aspects and embodiments of the technology of the present application, it will be understood that various changes, modifications, and improvements will readily occur to those skilled in the art. Such changes, modifications, and improvements are intended to be within the spirit and scope of the technology described herein. For example, those skilled in the art will readily envision various other means and / or structures for performing the function and / or obtaining one or more of the results and / or advantages described herein. Each of such variations and / or modifications is deemed to be within the scope of the embodiments described herein.

[0074] Those skilled in the art will recognize, or be able to ascertain using no more than routine experimentation, many equivalents to the specific embodiments described herein. Accordingly, it is to be understood that the foregoing embodiments are presented by way of example only, and that, within the scope of the appended claims and their equivalents, embodiments of the invention may be practiced otherwise than as specifically described. Furthermore, any combination of two or more features, systems, articles, materials, kits, and / or methods described herein, if such features, systems, articles, materials, kits, and / or methods are not mutually inconsistent, is within the scope of the present disclosure.

[0075] In this regard, the various inventive concepts may be embodied as a computer-readable storage medium (or multiple computer-readable storage media) (e.g., computer memory, compact disc, optical disk, magnetic tape, flash memory, circuitry in a field programmable gate array or other semiconductor device, or other tangible computer storage medium) encoded with one or more programs that, when executed on one or more computers or other processors, perform methods that implement one or more of the various embodiments described above. [Explanation of symbols]

[0076] 700 Radar Processing 800 Radar Cube

Claims

1. collecting radar signals reflected from objects within a field of view; forming a three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube from the radar signal, the three-dimensional range-angle-velocity cube including individual bins having radar intensity values ​​that characterize angles and ranges for particular velocities; selecting point-pillar subcubes from the three-dimensional distance-angle-velocity cube, each point-pillar subcube covering a predefined range surrounding a high-energy peak in the distance-angle dimension and an entire range in the velocity vector; compressing or decompressing the data in the point-pillar subcube to cluster, track, or classify objects within the field of view; A method comprising:

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the predefined range is a percentage of the high-energy peak.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the predefined range is within a threshold distance of the high-energy peak.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising the act of reducing the velocity data with a pointwise operator.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising the act of reducing the velocity data using a neural network.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising the act of reconstructing point-pillar subcubes.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein a neural network is used to cluster, track, or classify objects within the field of view.

8. a transmitter configured to transmit a radar signal; a receiver configured to receive radar signals reflected from objects within a field of view; a signal processor configured to carry out the method of any one of claims 1 to 7; 2. A radar system comprising:

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