METHOD FOR VISUAL DETECTION AND POSITION ESTIMATION OF ROAD FLARES

The disclosed technology provides solutions for applying a flare detection model to an image for detecting road flares in an environment by an autonomous vehicle (AV). A method comprises accessing a flare detection model that is trained to recognize a bounded outer region and a bounded inner region; and detect a flare object within the bounded inner region and refrain from detecting an object in the bounded outer region; applying the flare detection model to an image of the environment to recognize an outer region corresponding to a glow of a flare and an inner region that corresponds to the flare in the environment; and detecting the flare in the environment within the inner region based on the inner region being recognized by the flare detection model and contained within the outer region that is also recognized by the flare detection model. Systems and machine-readable media are also provided.