Real-Time clustering and LiDAR-camera fusion on embedded platforms for self-driving cars

3D object detection and classification are crucial tasks for perception in Autonomous Driving (AD). To promptly and correctly react to environment changes and avoid hazards, it is of paramount importance to perform those operations with high accuracy and in real-time. One of the most widely adopted strategies to improve the detection precision is to fuse information from different sensors, like e.g. cameras and LiDAR. However, sensor fusion is a computationally intensive task, that may be difficult to execute in real-time on an embedded platforms. In this paper, we present a new approach for LiDAR and camera fusion, that can be suitable to execute within the tight timing requirements of an autonomous driving system. The proposed method is based on a new clustering algorithm developed for the LiDAR point cloud, a new technique for the alignment of the sensors, and an optimization of the Yolo-v3 neural network. The efficiency of the proposed method is validated comparing it against state-of-the-art solutions on commercial embedded platforms.