DETECTION OF LOSS-OF-CONTROL VULNERABLE ROAD USERS IN AUTOMOTIVE ENVIRONMENTS

The disclosed systems and techniques are directed to identifying and responding to presence of vulnerable road users (VRUs) in driving environments that are at risk of loss of control of their driving trajectories. The techniques include collecting, using a sensing system of an autonomous vehicle, sensing data for an environment of the autonomous vehicle and processing the sensing data by one or more machine learning models to identify a plurality of reference points associated with a VRU in the environment. The techniques further include identifying one or more height differentials for the plurality of reference points, determining that the VRU is at risk of loss of control, based at least on a change of the one or more height differentials, and causing a control system of the autonomous vehicle to perform an avoidance action.