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  • Point cloud-based low-height obstacle detection system
    Patent number: 11527076
    Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system for determining a low-height obstacle based on outputs of a LIDAR device in an autonomous vehicle is disclosed. A point cloud comprising a plurality of points is generated based on outputs of a LIDAR device. For each point within a first number of lowest rings of points, a neighboring point in a same ring to a first direction is determined, and a first and a second coordinate values-related differences are determined. A first, a second, a third, and a fourth quantities are determined based on the first and second differences. In response to determining that the first, the second, the third, and the fourth quantities satisfy a predetermined condition, a low-height obstacle is determined based on the points within the first number of lowest rings of points. Operations of an autonomous vehicle are controlled based at least in part on the determined low-height obstacle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 26, 2020
    Date of Patent: December 13, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD
    Inventors: Xiang Liu, Shuang Zhang, Fan Zhu
  • Torque feedback based vehicle longitudinal automatic calibration system for autonomous driving vehicles
    Patent number: 11325611
    Abstract: A calibration table usable in operating an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV) is updated. The operations comprise: determining a first torque value at a first time instant prior to executing a control command; determining a control command based on a speed of the ADV, a desired acceleration, and an associated entry in the calibration table; executing the control command; determining a second torque value at a second time instant subsequent to executing the control command; determining a torque error value as a difference between the first and second torque values; updating the associated entry in the calibration table based at least in part on the torque error value; and generating driving signals based at least in part on the updated calibration table to control operations of the ADV.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 26, 2018
    Date of Patent: May 10, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Lin Ma, Fan Zhu, Xin Xu
  • Method and system for generating phrase blacklist to prevent certain content from appearing in a search result in response to search queries
    Patent number: 11604843
    Abstract: According to one embodiment, a first phrase having one or more keywords is received to be added to a phrase blacklist, where the first phrase has been determined to be related to unwanted content. An analysis is performed on the keywords of the first phrase to identifying a set of one or more related phrases that are related to the first phrase. The first phrase and the set of related phrases are added in the phrase blacklist. The phrase blacklist contains a plurality of phrases that have been determined to be related to unwanted content. The phrase blacklist is utilized to prevent a content item from appearing in a search result, in response to a search query having a phrase matching at least one of the phrases in the phrase backlist.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 2, 2016
    Date of Patent: March 14, 2023
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Dong Li, Lei Ma, Guang Yang, Deping Xie
  • Data transfer logic for transferring data between sensors and planning and control of an autonomous driving vehicle
    Patent number: 11250701
    Abstract: In one embodiment, a sensor unit to be utilized in an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV) includes a sensor interface that can be coupled to a number of sensors mounted on a number of different locations of the ADV. The sensor unit further includes a host interface that can be coupled to a host system such as a planning and control system utilized to autonomously drive the vehicle. The sensor unit further includes a number of data transfer modules corresponding to the sensors. Each of the data transfer modules can be configured to operate in one of the operating modes, dependent upon the type of the corresponding sensor. The operating modes include a low latency mode, a high bandwidth mode, and a memory mode.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 24, 2018
    Date of Patent: February 15, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Manjiang Zhang, Xiangtao You, Davy Huang, Tiffany Zhang, Shuai Wang
  • Corner negotiation method for autonomous driving vehicles without map and localization
    Patent number: 11312380
    Abstract: An ADV perceives a driving environment surrounding the ADV based on sensor data obtained from a variety of sensors mounted on the ADV including, for example, perceiving and recognizing a corner the ADV may be about to turn. Based on the perception data of the driving environment, a set of features representing the characteristics of an entrance point of a corner that the ADV is about to turn. Based on the characteristics of the corner, an entrance point of the corner is determined. Based on the entrance point, a lookup operation is performed in a corner mapping table to locate a mapping entry matching the entrance point. A turning radius is then obtained from the mapping entry of the corner mapping table. The turning radius obtained from the corner mapping table is then utilized to plan a trajectory (e.g., steering angle) to drive the ADV to turn the corner.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 26, 2018
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Xin Xu, Fan Zhu, Lin Ma
  • ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING THE SAME
    Publication number: 20130212082
    Abstract: An online application system and a method for implementing an online application system are disclosed. A method for implementing the online application system includes a) receiving a user search request from a user browser; b) searching for a match according to the search request and obtaining an online application that matches with the search request to form a search result page; and c) presenting the online application before the user browser in a form as a canvas page which is embedded in the search result page and is directly accessible from the search result page. The present disclosure also provides an online application system. The technical solutions disclosed herein allow a user to directly search out an online application via a search engine without a need to click multi-level linkages, thereby providing a quick and convenient search process which enhances the users' experiences with networks.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 13, 2013
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
  • Method and apparatus for adjusting parameter
    Patent number: 10699127
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for adjusting a parameter are provided. The method may include: acquiring a current value of at least one parameter which is in a process of generating a video corresponding to a commentary of the news cluster based on a news cluster; determining a video evaluation score of the video which is generated based on the news cluster and according to the current value of the at least one parameter; performing feature extraction on the current value of the at least one parameter to obtain a feature representation; inputting the feature representation and the determined video evaluation score into a pre-trained evaluation network to obtain a predicted video evaluation score; inputting the feature representation and the predicted video evaluation score into a pre-trained operation network, to obtain current operation information; and adjusting the current value of the at least one parameter based on the current operation information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 4, 2019
    Date of Patent: June 30, 2020
    Assignees: Baidu.com Times Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Baidu USA LLC
    Inventors: Hao Tian, Daming Lu, Xi Chen, Jeff ChienYu Wang
  • Optimal planner switch method for three point turn of autonomous driving vehicles
    Patent number: 11338855
    Abstract: A three-point-turn is planned and executed in the operation of an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV). A candidate route from a start point and going through an end point is determined, the start point and the end point being in lanes associated with opposite travel directions. The candidate route is categorized into partially overlapping first, second, and third segments. A total cost associated with the candidate route is determined based at least in part on the first and second segments. Whether the total cost is below a threshold cost is determined. In response to a determination that the total cost is below the threshold cost, the three-point-turn is planned based on the candidate route. Further, driving signals are generated based at least in part on the planned three-point-turn to control operations of the ADV.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 26, 2018
    Date of Patent: May 24, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BELING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Lin Ma, Fan Zhu, Xin Xu
  • Fan-less chiller-less liquid-air cooling for electronic racks of it components in data centers
    Patent number: 10674635
    Abstract: A data center cooling system includes a housing to contain electronic racks of IT components operating therein, a coolant distribution unit (CDU) situated within the housing to control a liquid flow of a cooling liquid. One or more liquid cooling devices are disposed on the IT components to receive a first liquid from the CDU, to exchange or extract heat generated from the IT components, to transform the first liquid to a second liquid with a higher temperature, and to transmit the second liquid back to the CDU. The CDU is coupled to a heat transfer system to dissipate the exchanged heat to an external environment. The data center cooling system includes an airflow delivery system to generate a direct or indirect airflow to travel through the servers of the electronic racks to remove heat generated by the servers to the external environment eliminating chiller and IT fans.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 5, 2017
    Date of Patent: June 2, 2020
    Assignees: Baidu USA LLC, Baidu.com Times Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Tianyi Gao, Yan Cui, Xiaogang Sun, Ali Heydari
  • CURSOR-BASED ADAPTIVE QUANTIZATION FOR DEEP NEURAL NETWORKS
    Publication number: 20210232890
    Abstract: Deep neural networks (DNN) model quantization may be used to reduce storage and computation burdens by decreasing the bit width. Presented herein are novel cursor-based adaptive quantization embodiments. In embodiments, a multiple bits quantization mechanism is formulated as a differentiable architecture search (DAS) process with a continuous cursor that represents a possible quantization bit. In embodiments, the cursor-based DAS adaptively searches for a quantization bit for each layer. The DAS process may be accelerated via an alternative approximate optimization process, which is designed for mixed quantization scheme of a DNN model. In embodiments, a new loss function is used in the search process to simultaneously optimize accuracy and parameter size of the model. In a quantization step, the closest two integers to the cursor may be adopted as the bits to quantize the DNN together to reduce the quantization noise and avoid the local convergence problem.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 24, 2019
    Publication date: July 29, 2021
    Applicants: Baidu USA LLC, Baidu.com Times Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Baopu LI, Yanwen FAN, Zhiyu CHENG, Yingze BAO
  • Attestation protocol between a host system and a data processing accelerator
    Patent number: 11409534
    Abstract: According to one embodiment, a system receives, at a host system a public attestation key (PK_ATT) or a signed PK_ATT from a data processing (DP) accelerator over a bus. The system verifies the PK_ATT using a public root key (PK_RK) associated with the DP accelerator. In response to successfully verifying the PK_ATT, the system transmits a kernel identifier (ID) to the DP accelerator to request attesting a kernel object stored in the DP accelerator. In response to the system receives a kernel digest or a signed kernel digest corresponding to the kernel object from the DP accelerator, verifying the kernel digest using the PK_ATT. The system sends the verification results to the DP accelerator for the DP accelerator to access the kernel object based on the verification results.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 4, 2019
    Date of Patent: August 9, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD., KUNLUNXIN TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) COMPANY LIMITED
    Inventors: Yueqiang Cheng, Yong Liu, Tao Wei, Jian Ouyang
  • Fan-less chiller-less liquid-air cooling for electronic racks of IT components in data centers
    Patent number: 11219141
    Abstract: A data center cooling system includes a housing to contain electronic racks of IT components operating therein, a coolant distribution unit (CDU) situated within the housing to control a liquid flow of a cooling liquid. One or more liquid cooling devices are disposed on the IT components to receive a first liquid from the CDU, to exchange or extract heat generated from the IT components, to transform the first liquid to a second liquid with a higher temperature, and to transmit the second liquid back to the CDU. The CDU is coupled to a heat transfer system to dissipate the exchanged heat to an external environment. The data center cooling system includes an airflow delivery system to generate a direct or indirect airflow to travel through the servers of the electronic racks to remove heat generated by the servers to the external environment eliminating chiller and IT fans.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2020
    Date of Patent: January 4, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Tianyi Gao, Yan Cui, Xiaogang Sun, Ali Heydari
  • NEURAL ARCHITECTURE SEARCH VIA SIMILARITY-BASED OPERATOR RANKING
    Publication number: 20220092381
    Abstract: Network architecture search (NAS) received a lot of attention. The supernet-based differentiable approach is popular because it can effectively share the weights and lead to more efficient search. However, the mismatch between the architecture and weights caused by weight sharing still exists. Moreover, the coupling effects among different operators are also neglected. To alleviate these problems, embodiments of an effective NAS methodology by similarity-based operator ranking are presented herein. With the aim of approximating each layer's output in the supernet, a similarity-based operator ranking based on statistical random comparison is used. In one or more embodiments, then the operator that possibly causes the least change to feature distribution discrepancy is pruned. In one or more embodiments, a fair sampling process may be used to mitigate the operators' Matthew effect that happened frequently in previous supernet approaches.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 18, 2020
    Publication date: March 24, 2022
    Applicants: Baidu USA LLC, Baidu.com Times Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Baopu LI, Yanwen FAN, Zhihong PAN, Teng XI, Gang ZHANG
  • Method for determining a vehicle control parameter, apparatus for the same, vehicle on-board controller, and autonomous vehicle
    Patent number: 11269340
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure disclose a method for determining a vehicle control parameter, an apparatus for the same, a vehicle on-board controller, and an autonomous vehicle. An embodiment of the method comprises: obtaining a lateral offset sequence of a vehicle and a control input sequence of a controller for controlling a lateral output of the vehicle, wherein a lateral offset in the lateral offset sequence is for characterizing an offset between an actual lateral output of the vehicle and a desired lateral output; executing a step of determining a vehicle control parameter; wherein the executing the step of determining the vehicle control parameter includes: with the lateral offset sequence as an input and the control input sequence as the desired output, training a pre-established vehicle dynamic model to obtain a trained vehicle dynamic model; and determining the vehicle control parameter from the trained vehicle dynamic model.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 1, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 8, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Fan Zhu, Lin Ma, Qi Kong
  • Point clouds registration system for autonomous vehicles
    Patent number: 11608078
    Abstract: In one embodiment, a system is disclosed for registration of point clouds for autonomous driving vehicles (ADV). The system receives a number of point clouds and corresponding poses from ADVs equipped with LIDAR sensors capturing point clouds of a navigable area to be mapped, where the point clouds correspond to a first coordinate system. The system partitions the point clouds and the corresponding poses into one or more loop partitions based on navigable loop information captured by the point clouds. For each of the loop partitions, the system applies an optimization model to point clouds corresponding to the loop partition to register the point clouds. They system merges the one or more loop partitions together using a pose graph algorithm, where the merged partitions of point clouds are utilized to perceive a driving environment surrounding the ADV.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 30, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 21, 2023
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Runxin He, Yong Xiao, Pengfei Yuan, Li Yu, Shiyu Song
  • Method and apparatus for determining a vehicle control parameter, vehicle on-board controller and autonomous vehicle
    Patent number: 10942521
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure disclose a method for determining a vehicle control parameter, an apparatus for the same, a vehicle controller, and an autonomous vehicle. An embodiment of the method comprises: determining a current vehicle speed and an expected acceleration; determining, from a pre-generated parameter calibration table, a longitudinal control parameter corresponding to the current vehicle speed and the expected acceleration; wherein the parameter calibration table is obtained by: obtaining a training sample set, a training sample in the training sample set including the vehicle speed, the longitudinal control parameter and the acceleration; training a pre-established parameter calibration model with the vehicle speed and acceleration of respective samples in the training sample set as inputs and the longitudinal control parameter value in the training sample as an expected output; and obtaining the parameter calibration table based on the trained parameter calibration model.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 1, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 9, 2021
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Fan Zhu, Lin Ma, Qi Kong
  • Method of parking an autonomous driving vehicle for autonomous charging
    Patent number: 11584248
    Abstract: In one embodiment, an exemplary method of autonomously charging an autonomous driving vehicle includes receiving, from a sensor in an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV), indication that a batter level of the ADV falls below a threshold; and selecting a charging pile from a plurality of charging piles on a high definition map based on information received from a cloud server. The method further includes generating a first trajectory based on a current location of the ADV and a location of the selected charging pile, the first trajectory connecting a first point representing the current location of the ADV to a second point at the selected charging pile, and including a first segment and a second segment. The method further includes driving forward along the first segment of the first trajectory, and driving backward along the second segment of the first trajectory when the ADV drives towards the selected charging pile along the first trajectory.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 20, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 21, 2023
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Ning Yu, Fan Zhu, Jingjing Xue
  • Simulation-based method to evaluate perception requirement for autonomous driving vehicles
    Patent number: 11016500
    Abstract: In one embodiment, a system is designed to determine the requirement of a perception range for a particular type of vehicles and a particular planning and control technology. A shadow filter is used to connect a scenario based simulator and a PnC module, and tuning the parameters (e.g. decreasing the filter range, tuning the probability of obstacles to be observed among frames) of shadow filter to mimic the real world perceptions with a limited range and reliabilities. Based on the simulation results (e.g., a failure rate, smoothness, etc.), the system is able to determine the required perception distance for the current PnC module. A PnC module represents a particular autonomous driving planning and control technology for a particular type of autonomous driving vehicles. Notice that the PnC module is replaceable so that this method is suitable for different PnC algorithms representing different autonomous driving technologies.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2018
    Date of Patent: May 25, 2021
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Liangliang Zhang, Kairui Yang, Jiangtao Hu
  • Lidar localization using RNN and LSTM for temporal smoothness in autonomous driving vehicles
    Patent number: 11364931
    Abstract: In one embodiment, a method for temporal smoothness in localization results for an autonomous driving vehicle includes: creating a probability offset volume that represents an overall matching cost between a first set of keypoints from the online point cloud and a second set of keypoints from a pre-built point cloud map for each of a series of sequential light detection and ranging (LiDAR) frames in an online point cloud. The method also includes compressing the probability offset volume into multiple probability vectors across a X dimension, a Y dimension and a yaw dimension; providing each probability vector of the probability offset volume to a number of recurrent neural networks (RNNs); and generating, by the RNNs, a trajectory of location results across the plurality of sequential LiDAR frames.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 30, 2019
    Date of Patent: June 21, 2022
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO. LTD.
    Inventors: Weixin Lu, Yao Zhou, Guowei Wan, Shenhua Hou, Shiyu Song
  • Mutual nudge algorithm for self-reverse lane of autonomous driving
    Patent number: 11084503
    Abstract: According to various embodiments, systems and methods are provided for use by an ADV to nudge incoming objects in a self-reverse lane. In an embodiment, an ADV determines that a self-reverse lane has a predetermined width before entering the self-reverse lane. After entering the self-reverse lane, the ADV can follow a first reference line at the center of the self-reverse lane. In response to detecting an incoming object, the ADV creates an alternative lane in the self-reverse lane by temporarily modifying a high definition map. The ADV subsequently follows a second reference line in the alternative lane to nudge the incoming object. In response to detecting that the incoming object has passed and the self-reverse lane is clear, the ADV can drive back to the center of the self-reverse lane, to continue to follow the first reference line in the self-reverse lane.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 26, 2018
    Date of Patent: August 10, 2021
    Assignees: BAIDU USA LLC, BAIDU.COM TIMES TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Fan Zhu, Lin Ma, Xin Xu
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