Abstract: The present invention presents a method and system for an autonomous mower attached with a camera, wherein the control of the parameters of the camera and the control of the mower movement and grass detection are optimized holistically during operation. The present invention mitigates the camera sensing limits by adapting the movement speed of the mower. Furthermore, the camera control optimizes the visibility of grass by using the grass mask of a grass segmentation to calculate updated exposure, gain and aperture values only from grass pixels. The grass segmentation tracks changes in the grass color that are caused by illumination differences. Optionally, the system is equipped with a head light used to further improve the camera signal quality in conjunction with the control of the camera parameters and the movement speed of the mower.

Abstract: An anticipatory monitoring and prediction system can include methods for generating effective, accurate predictions of other traffic objects in the vicinity of an ego-car. The invention proposes to combine approximate probability distributions (ADPs) of agent states with Attractor Functions (AFs) for generating distributed probabilistic representations of the potential future states of the observed traffic objects. AFs are selected based on both the current road context, in which the ego-car is situated, and the current states of all participating objects. The generated predictions can be used to filter incoming sensory information for better object state estimations, rate the nature of the behavior of other traffic objects by comparing generated predictions with actual perceived sensor information, or infer accident likelihoods by comparing the predicted state distributions of objects and the ego-car. Warning and information signals or control commands can be issued in a driving assistance system.