DeepIPCv2: LiDAR-powered Robust Environmental Perception and Navigational Control for Autonomous Vehicle

We present DeepIPCv2, an autonomous driving model that perceives the environment using a LiDAR sensor for more robust drivability, especially when driving under poor illumination conditions. DeepIPCv2 takes a set of LiDAR point clouds for its main perception input. As point clouds are not affected by illumination changes, they can provide a clear observation of the surroundings no matter what the condition is. This results in a better scene understanding and stable features provided by the perception module to support the controller module in estimating navigational control properly. To evaluate its performance, we conduct several tests by deploying the model to predict a set of driving records and perform real automated driving under three different conditions. We also conduct ablation and comparative studies with some recent models to justify its performance. Based on the experimental results, DeepIPCv2 shows a robust performance by achieving the best drivability in all conditions. Codes are available at https://github.com/oskarnatan/DeepIPCv2