US Patent 11327178 Piece-wise network structure for long range environment perception

An apparatus and method for performing environment perception is described. An example technique may include receiving a point cloud from a sensor, such as a LiDAR sensor, the point cloud including a plurality of points representing positions of objects relative to the LiDAR sensor. The example techniques may further include dividing the point cloud into a plurality of distances ranges, processing the points in each distance range of the point cloud with a different section of a plurality of sections of a piece-wise network structure, and outputting environment perception data from the piece-wise network structure.