ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,235,396, issued on Feb. 25, was assigned to Zoox Inc. (Foster City, Calif.).
"Lidar obstruction detection" was invented by Nehemia Girma Terefe (Santa Barbara, Calif.), Mohammad Umar Piracha (Union City, Calif.) and Samantha Marie Ting (Redwood City, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Techniques for detecting an obstruction associated with a lidar sensor are discussed herein. For example, a computing device can implement an obstruction detection component to detect rain, mud, dirt, dust, snow, ice, animal droppings, etc., on and/or near an outer surface of the lidar sensor. The obstruction detection component can apply one or more heu...