We propose a layered street view model to encode both depth and semantic information on street view images for autonomous driving. Recently, stixels, stix-mantics, and tiered scene labeling methods have been proposed to model street view images. We propose a 4-layer street view model, a compact representation over the recently proposed stix-mantics model. Our layers encode semantic classes like ground, pedestrians, vehicles, buildings, and sky in addition to the depths. The only input to our algorithm is a pair of stereo images. We use a deep neural network to extract the appearance features for semantic classes. We use a simple and an efficient inference algorithm to jointly estimate both semantic classes and layered depth values. Our method outperforms other competing approaches in Daimler urban scene segmentation dataset. Our algorithm is massively parallelizable, allowing a GPU implementation with a processing speed about 9 fps.
Stix-mantics @cite_11 , a recently introduced model, gives more flexibility compared to stixels. Instead of having only one stixel for every column, they allow multiple segments along every column in the image and also combine nearby segments to form superpixel-style entities with better geometric meaning. Using these stixel-inspired superpixels, semantic class labeling is addressed.
@cite_11
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In this paper we present Semantic Stixels, a novel vision-based scene model geared towards automated driving. Our model jointly infers the geometric and semantic layout of a scene and provides a compact yet rich abstraction of both cues using Stixels as primitive elements. Geometric information is incorporated into our model in terms of pixel-level disparity maps derived from stereo vision. For semantics, we leverage a modern deep learning-based scene labeling approach that provides an object class label for each pixel. Our experiments involve an in-depth analysis and a comprehensive assessment of the constituent parts of our approach using three public benchmark datasets. We evaluate the geometric and semantic accuracy of our model and analyze the underlying run-times and the complexity of the obtained representation. Our results indicate that the joint treatment of both cues on the Semantic Stixel level yields a highly compact environment representation while maintaining an accuracy comparable to the two individual pixel-level input data sources. Moreover, our framework compares favorably to related approaches in terms of computational costs and operates in real-time. In this paper we present Stixmantics, a novel medium-level scene representation for real-time visual semantic scene understanding. Relevant scene structure, motion and object class information is encoded using so-called Stixels as primitive elements. Sparse feature-point trajectories are used to estimate the 3D motion field and to enforce temporal consistency of semantic labels. Spatial label coherency is obtained by using a CRF framework. We propose a novel approach to pixel-level semantic labeling, which aims to rapidly infer the coarse layout of street scenes from color, texture and depth information in a joint fashion using a randomized decision forest. The recovered pixellevel class probability maps provide a general purpose basis to guide more elaborate vision algorithms. To demonstrate the richness of our labeling, we extend the well-known Stixel model to use the semantic labels as input cues. In addition, we employ our generated low-level information as an attention mechanism for a vehicle detector. In both cases, recognition performance and accuracy are significantly improved. In our experimental evaluation on the public KITTI benchmark, we thoroughly study the characteristics of different feature channels as well as their contribution to the overall pixellevel labeling result. Our results underline that the combination of several orthogonal feature channels in a joint model is key to superior performance. This performance improvement comes at little additional cost, given that our approach is able to operate at 100 Hz using a GPU implementation. This paper presents a compact and accurate representation of 3D scenes that are observed by a LiDAR sensor and a monocular camera. The proposed method is based on the well-established Stixel model originally developed for stereo vision applications. We extend this Stixel concept to incorporate data from multiple sensor modalities. The resulting mid-level fusion scheme takes full advantage of the geometric accuracy of LiDAR measurements as well as the high resolution and semantic detail of RGB images. The obtained environment model provides a geometrically and semantically consistent representation of the 3D scene at a significantly reduced amount of data while minimizing information loss at the same time. Since the different sensor modalities are considered as input to a joint optimization problem, the solution is obtained with only minor computational overhead. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed multimodal Stixel algorithm on a manually annotated ground truth dataset. Our results indicate that the proposed mid-level fusion of LiDAR and camera data improves both the geometric and semantic accuracy of the Stixel model significantly while reducing the computational overhead as well as the amount of generated data in comparison to using a single modality on its own.