US Patent 11977392 Identifying elements in an environment

An example method of detecting an element using an autonomous vehicle includes the following operations: using a sensor on the autonomous vehicle to capture image data in a region of interest containing the element, where the image data represents components of the element; filtering the image data to produce filtered data having less of an amount of data than the image data; identifying the components of the element by analyzing the filtered data using a deterministic process; and detecting the element based on the components.