US Patent 11541903 Autonomous driving with surfel maps

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for using a surfel map to generate a prediction for a state of an environment. One of the methods includes obtaining surfel data comprising a plurality of surfels, wherein each surfel corresponds to a respective different location in an environment, and each surfel has associated data that comprises an uncertainty measure; obtaining sensor data for one or more locations in the environment, the sensor data having been captured by one or more sensors of a first vehicle; determining one or more particular surfels corresponding to respective locations of the obtained sensor data; and combining the surfel data and the sensor data to generate a respective object prediction for each of the one or more locations of the obtained sensor data.