# Probabilistic Rainfall Estimation from Automotive Lidar

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.11467 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11467/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Variational Inference: A Review for Statisticians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.00670/) (2016)
- [Evidential Deep Learning to Quantify Classification Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01768/) (2018)
- [RandLA-Net: Efficient Semantic Segmentation of Large-Scale Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11236/) (2019)
- [Weather Influence and Classification with Automotive Lidar Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07675/) (2019)
- [Is it Safe to Drive? An Overview of Factors, Challenges, and Datasets for Driveability Assessment in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11277/) (2018)
- [What happens to a ToF LiDAR in fog?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06660/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Survey on LiDAR Perception in Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06312/) (2023)
- [Deep learning for radar data exploitation of autonomous vehicle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08038/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Robust sensing and perception in adverse weather conditions remain one of the biggest challenges for realizing reliable autonomous vehicle mobility services. Prior work has established that rainfall rate is a useful measure for the adversity of atmospheric weather conditions. This work presents a probabilistic hierarchical Bayesian model that infers rainfall rate from automotive lidar point cloud sequences with high accuracy and reliability. The model is a hierarchical mixture of experts model, or a probabilistic decision tree, with gating and expert nodes consisting of variational logistic and linear regression models. Experimental data used to train and evaluate the model is collected in a large-scale rainfall experiment facility from both stationary and moving vehicle platforms. The results show prediction accuracy comparable to the measurement resolution of a disdrometer, and the soundness and usefulness of the uncertainty estimation. The model achieves RMSE 2.42,mm/h after filtering out uncertain predictions. The error is comparable to the mean rainfall rate change of 3.5,mm/h between measurements. Model parameter studies show how predictive performance changes with tree depth, sampling duration, and crop box dimension. A second experiment demonstrates the predictability of higher rainfall above 300,mm/h using a different lidar sensor, demonstrating sensor independence.