SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CONTROLLING THE OPERATION OF AN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE USING MULTIPLE TRAFFIC LIGHT DETECTORS

Systems and methods for controlling the operation of an autonomous vehicle are disclosed herein. One embodiment performs traffic light detection at an intersection using a sensor-based traffic light detector to produce a sensor-based detection output, the sensor-based detection output having an associated first confidence level; performs traffic light detection at the intersection using a vehicle-to-infrastructure-based (V2I-based) traffic light detector to produce a V2I-based detection output, the V2I-based detection output having an associated second confidence level; performs one of (1) selecting as a final traffic-light-detection output whichever of the sensor-based detection output and the V2I-based detection output has a higher associated confidence level and (2) generating the final traffic-light-detection output by fusing the sensor-based detection output and the V2I-based detection output using a first learning-based classifier; and controls the operation of the autonomous vehicle based, at least in part, on the final traffic-light-detection output.