Autonomous Vehicle Camera Exposure Adjustment at Lighting Boundaries
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Solution Overview
Problem
Autonomous vehicle sensors often encounter sensory inputs outside their operating ranges due to changing environmental conditions, leading to suboptimal performance and potential errors in navigation and control.
Innovation Solution
The system determines predicted environmental states based on sensor data and adjusts the operating ranges of the sensors accordingly, ensuring they remain within operational parameters.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the sensor operates with a fixed operating range, then the device complexity is reduced, but the reliability deteriorates when environmental conditions change
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic adjustment of camera exposure settings based on detected lighting boundaries. The system transitions from fixed exposure parameters to dynamically adjustable ones, allowing the camera to adapt its operating range in response to changing environmental lighting conditions, thereby maintaining reliability without requiring multiple fixed-configured sensors
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes operational parameters (exposure time, gain, brightness) of the camera sensor based on detected environmental conditions. By modifying these parameters in real-time according to lighting boundary detection, the sensor maintains optimal performance across varying environmental states without increasing hardware complexity
2Adaptability or versatility
If the sensor operates outside its optimal range, then the adaptability to environmental changes is improved, but the measurement precision deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary detection of lighting boundaries and predicts upcoming environmental changes before the sensor actually operates outside its optimal range. By anticipating transitions (e.g., entering shadow or sunlight), the system pre-adjusts exposure settings to maintain measurement precision throughout the transition
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors sensor data for lighting boundary conditions and uses this feedback to adjust exposure settings in real-time. This closed-loop control ensures the sensor operates within optimal parameters by detecting environmental transitions and correcting exposure settings before precision deteriorates
3Productivity
If the exposure settings are adjusted dynamically, then the productivity of data collection is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The camera system performs self-adjustment of exposure settings based on its own detected environmental conditions. The system uses its existing sensor data to automatically determine when lighting boundaries are approached and adjusts its own parameters without requiring external control, thereby improving data productivity while minimizing the need for additional control hardware
Data Source
AI summary
Modifying autonomous vehicle sensors cameras based on detected lighting boundaries, including: determining, based on video data, that a vehicle will pass through a lighting boundary; determining, based on the video data, that an illumination of a predicted input to a camera of the vehicle after passing the lighting boundary falls outside a range of illumination based on a current exposure setting of the camera; and modifying, in response to determining that the illumination of the predicted input falls outside the range of illumination, an exposure setting of one or more cameras.