3D Radar Velocity Maps for Uncertain Dynamic Environments

TL;DR

This paper presents a Bayesian method for creating 3D velocity maps in dynamic urban environments, enabling better safety and efficiency in autonomous transportation by modeling traffic flow and uncertainty.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable Bayesian approach using high-dimensional feature space projection and linear regression for 3D velocity mapping in uncertain, dynamic settings.

Findings

Effective in modeling 3D traffic flow.

More scalable than alternative methods.

Demonstrated on air and ground datasets.

Abstract

Future urban transportation concepts include a mixture of ground and air vehicles with varying degrees of autonomy in a congested environment. In such dynamic environments, occupancy maps alone are not sufficient for safe path planning. Safe and efficient transportation requires reasoning about the 3D flow of traffic and properly modeling uncertainty. Several different approaches can be taken for developing 3D velocity maps. This paper explores a Bayesian approach that captures our uncertainty in the map given training data. The approach involves projecting spatial coordinates into a high-dimensional feature space and then applying Bayesian linear regression to make predictions and quantify uncertainty in our estimates. On a collection of air and ground datasets, we demonstrate that this approach is effective and more scalable than several alternative approaches.