Informative Data Selection with Uncertainty for Multi-modal Object Detection

Noise has always been nonnegligible trouble in object detection by creating confusion in model reasoning, thereby reducing the informativeness of the data. It can lead to inaccurate recognition due to the shift in the observed pattern, that requires a robust generalization of the models. To implement a general vision model, we need to develop deep learning models that can adaptively select valid information from multi-modal data. This is mainly based on two reasons. Multi-modal learning can break through the inherent defects of single-modal data, and adaptive information selection can reduce chaos in multi-modal data. To tackle this problem, we propose a universal uncertainty-aware multi-modal fusion model. It adopts a multi-pipeline loosely coupled architecture to combine the features and results from point clouds and images. To quantify the correlation in multi-modal information, we model the uncertainty, as the inverse of data information, in different modalities and embed it in the bounding box generation. In this way, our model reduces the randomness in fusion and generates reliable output. Moreover, we conducted a completed investigation on the KITTI 2D object detection dataset and its derived dirty data. Our fusion model is proven to resist severe noise interference like Gaussian, motion blur, and frost, with only slight degradation. The experiment results demonstrate the benefits of our adaptive fusion. Our analysis on the robustness of multi-modal fusion will provide further insights for future research.

Temporal and Spatial Online Integrated Calibration for Camera and LiDAR

While camera and LiDAR are widely used in most of the assisted and autonomous driving systems, only a few works have been proposed to associate the temporal synchronization and extrinsic calibration for camera and LiDAR which are dedicated to online sensors data fusion. The temporal and spatial calibration technologies are facing the challenges of lack of relevance and real-time. In this paper, we introduce the pose estimation model and environmental robust line features extraction to improve the relevance of data fusion and instant online ability of correction. Dynamic targets eliminating aims to seek optimal policy considering the correspondence of point cloud matching between adjacent moments. The searching optimization process aims to provide accurate parameters with both computation accuracy and efficiency. To demonstrate the benefits of this method, we evaluate it on the KITTI benchmark with ground truth value. In online experiments, our approach improves the accuracy by 38.5\% than the soft synchronization method in temporal calibration. While in spatial calibration, our approach automatically corrects disturbance errors within 0.4 second and achieves an accuracy of 0.3-degree. This work can promote the research and application of sensor fusion.