RCAL: A Lightweight Road Cognition and Automated Labeling System for Autonomous Driving Scenarios

Jiancheng Chen, Chao Yu, Huayou Wang, Kun Liu, Yifei Zhan, Xianpeng Lang, Changliang Xue

Abstract: Vectorized reconstruction and topological cognition of road structures are crucial for autonomous vehicles to handle complex scenes. Traditional frameworks rely heavily on high-definition (HD) maps, which place significant demands on storage, computation, and manual labor. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a lightweight Road Cognition and Automated Labeling (RCAL) system. It leverages lightweight road data captured from mass-produced vehicles to vectorize road elements and cognize their topology. RCAL compiles multi-trip data on cloud servers for enhanced accuracy and coverage, addressing the limitations of single-trip data. In the field of element extraction, we proposed a pivotal point priority sampling strategy that can balance the contradiction between road scale and processing efficiency. Additionally, traffic flow is utilized to enhance the accuracy of road topology cognition. With its impressive automation, reliability, and efficiency, RCAL stands as an advanced solution in the field. Our evaluations on the intersection dataset from the real world confirm that RCAL not only achieves comparable precision to traditional HD map labeling systems but also substantially reducing resource costs.