DeepSTEP -- Deep Learning-Based Spatio-Temporal End-To-End Perception for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles demand high accuracy and robustness of perception algorithms. To develop efficient and scalable perception algorithms, the maximum information should be extracted from the available sensor data. In this work, we present our concept for an end-to-end perception architecture, named DeepSTEP. The deep learning-based architecture processes raw sensor data from the camera, LiDAR, and RaDAR, and combines the extracted data in a deep fusion network. The output of this deep fusion network is a shared feature space, which is used by perception head networks to fulfill several perception tasks, such as object detection or local mapping. DeepSTEP incorporates multiple ideas to advance state of the art: First, combining detection and localization into a single pipeline allows for efficient processing to reduce computational overhead and further improves overall performance. Second, the architecture leverages the temporal domain by using a self-attention mechanism that focuses on the most important features. We believe that our concept of DeepSTEP will advance the development of end-to-end perception systems. The network will be deployed on our research vehicle, which will be used as a platform for data collection, real-world testing, and validation. In conclusion, DeepSTEP represents a significant advancement in the field of perception for autonomous vehicles. The architecture's end-to-end design, time-aware attention mechanism, and integration of multiple perception tasks make it a promising solution for real-world deployment. This research is a work in progress and presents the first concept of establishing a novel perception pipeline.