Mapping LiDAR and Camera Measurements in a Dual Top-View Grid Representation Tailored for Automated Vehicles

Abstract: We present a generic evidential grid mapping pipeline designed for imaging sensors such as LiDARs and cameras. Our grid-based evidential model contains semantic estimates for cell occupancy and ground separately. We specify the estimation steps for input data represented by point sets, but mainly focus on input data represented by images such as disparity maps or LiDAR range images. Instead of relying on an external ground segmentation only, we deduce occupancy evidence by analyzing the surface orientation around measurements. We conduct experiments and evaluate the presented method using LiDAR and stereo camera data recorded in real traffic scenarios. Our method estimates cell occupancy robustly and with a high level of detail while maximizing efficiency and minimizing the dependency to external processing modules.