Patents by Inventor Philip C. Du Toit

Philip C. Du Toit has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20240300486
    Abstract: Exemplary embodiments described herein include systems and method to remove tracks from a tracker when the tracks are within an occluded region, including defining a map of a driving area; defining an occlusion area within the map; detecting an object using sensor data from one or more sensors; determining that the object entered the occlusion area; creating an estimated object location for the object within the occlusion area; dropping the estimated object location for the object when the occlusion area is cleared.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 6, 2023
    Publication date: September 12, 2024
    Inventors: Collin Otis, Philip C. Du Toit
  • Publication number: 20240300487
    Abstract: Exemplary embodiments include methods and systems to adjust a driving path in a planner-map, including: identifying a driving surface; determining a path on the driving surface; identifying one or more objects relative to the driving surface using one or more sensors; detecting one or more occlusion areas from sensor data from the one or more sensors; tracking one or more tracks of one or more objects within the one or more occlusion areas; adding uncertainty to the one or more tracks within the one or more occlusion areas; and adjusting the path on the driving surface based on the uncertainty of the one or more tracks within the one or more occlusion areas.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 6, 2023
    Publication date: September 12, 2024
    Inventors: Collin Otis, Philip C. Du Toit
  • Publication number: 20240300533
    Abstract: Exemplary embodiments include systems and methods to maintain tracking of an object that passes into an occluded area, including defining a map of a driving area; defining one or more occlusion areas within the map; detecting an object using sensor data from one or more sensors; creating an object track for the object detected using sensor data; determining that the object track entered one of the one or more occlusion areas; and maintaining the object track while the object track remains in the one or more occlusion areas.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 6, 2023
    Publication date: September 12, 2024
    Inventors: Collin Otis, Philip C. Du Toit
  • Publication number: 20240304001
    Abstract: Systems and methods for detecting a portion of an environment of a vehicle are provided. The method may comprise generating, using one or more sensors coupled to a vehicle, environment data from an environment of the vehicle, wherein the environmental data comprises one or more of the following: ground LiDAR data from the environment; camera data from the environment; and path data corresponding to a change in position of one or more other vehicles within the environment. The method may comprise inputting the environmental data into a machine learning model trained to generate a heatmap, and, using a processor, based on the environmental data, determining a portion of the environment, wherein the portion of the environment comprises an area having a likelihood, greater than a minimum threshold, of being adjacent to one or more pavement markings, and generating the heatmap, wherein the heatmap corresponds to the portion of the environment.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 6, 2023
    Publication date: September 12, 2024
    Applicant: Kodiak Robotics, Inc.
    Inventors: Kenar Vyas, Sean Roelofs, Collin C. Otis, Philip C. Du Toit
  • Publication number: 20240239368
    Abstract: This disclosure provides methods and systems for dynamically creating a trajectory for navigating a vehicle. The method may include receiving sensor data from at least one sensor of the autonomous vehicle, the sensor data representative of a driving surface in a field of view of the autonomous vehicle; segmenting a portion of the driving surface in the field of view of the autonomous vehicle by determining nominal path based at least in part on the image data; assigning a plurality of nodes to at least a portion of the nominal path; associating the plurality of the nodes assigned to the nominal path with a line to generate at least one segmentation polyline; determining updated nominal path by fitting the each of the plurality of segmentation lines to the nominal path; generating a trajectory based on the updated nominal path; and navigating the autonomous vehicle according to the trajectory.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 17, 2023
    Publication date: July 18, 2024
    Applicant: Kodiak Robotics, Inc.
    Inventors: Philip C. Du Toit, Akshay Khatri, Andreas Wendel, Zachais Vawter, Collin C. Otis, Ryan T. Lee
  • Publication number: 20240203130
    Abstract: This disclosure provides methods and systems for detecting and tracking objects in an environment of an autonomous vehicle.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 14, 2022
    Publication date: June 20, 2024
    Applicant: Kodiak Robotics, Inc.
    Inventors: Suchir Gupta, Collin C. Otis, Cole M. Miles, Philip C. Du Toit, Andreas Wendel
  • Publication number: 20240199065
    Abstract: This disclosure provides methods and systems for generating a training set for a neural network configured to generate candidate trajectories for an autonomous vehicle, comprising: receiving a set of sensor data representative of one or more portions of a plurality of objects in the environment of the autonomous vehicle; for each object, calculating a representative box enclosing the object, the representative box having portions comprising corners, edges, and planes; for each representative box, calculating at least one vector into the representative box from a position on the autonomous vehicle; for each vector, calculating a first and second corner position of the representative box, an edge of the representative box, and a plane of the representative box; determining the highest confidence corners, edge, and plane of each representative based on calculation from the at least one vector; and generating a training set including the highest confidence corners, edge, and plane of each representative box.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 28, 2022
    Publication date: June 20, 2024
    Applicant: Kodiak Robotics, Inc.
    Inventors: Suchir Gupta, Collin C. Otis, Cole M. Miles, Philip C. Du Toit, Andreas Wendel