title: Sloped terrain segmentation for autonomous drive using sparse 3D point cloud.
abstract: A ubiquitous environment for road travel that uses wireless networks requires the minimization of data exchange between vehicles. An algorithm that can segment the ground in real time is necessary to obtain location data between vehicles simultaneously executing autonomous drive. This paper proposes a framework for segmenting the ground in real time using a sparse three-dimensional (3D) point cloud acquired from undulating terrain. A sparse 3D point cloud can be acquired by scanning the geography using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors. For efficient ground segmentation, 3D point clouds are quantized in units of volume pixels (voxels) and overlapping data is eliminated. We reduce nonoverlapping voxels to two dimensions by implementing a lowermost heightmap. The ground area is determined on the basis of the number of voxels in each voxel group. We execute ground segmentation in real time by proposing an approach to minimize the comparison between neighboring voxels. Furthermore, we experimentally verify that ground segmentation can be executed at about 19.31 ms per frame.
authors.affiliation: Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Seoungjae
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jonghyun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Warda
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ikram
authors.affiliation: Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Kyungeun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Young-Sik
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7421-1105
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Jeong
authors.affiliation: Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, Seoul 100-715, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Kyhyun
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-2623-9506
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Um
authors.affiliation: Agency for Defense Development, Daejeon 305-152, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sungdae
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sim
references.citation: Sensors (Basel). 2012 Dec 12;12(12):17186-207
references.pmid: 23235454
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