US Patent 9315192 Methods and systems for pedestrian avoidance using LIDAR

An autonomous vehicle configured to detect and avoid pedestrians may use information from LIDAR or other range-based sensors. An example method involves: (a) receiving, at a computing device, range data corresponding to a plurality of objects in an environment of a vehicle, wherein the range data comprises a plurality of first data points; (b) generating a spherical data set comprising a plurality of second data points, wherein spherical coordinates for each second data point are generated based on a corresponding one of the first plurality of data points; and (c) determining a two-dimensional map based on the spherical data set comprising the plurality of second data points, wherein the two-dimensional map comprises a plurality of pixels, wherein each pixel of the plurality of pixels is indicative of a plurality of parameters corresponding to the plurality of objects in the environment.