Laser-based segment classification using a mixture of bag-of-words

In this paper, we propose a segment-based object detection approach using laser range data. Our detection approach is built up of three stages: First, a hierarchical segmentation approach generates a hierarchy of coarse-to-fine segments to reduce the impact of over- and under-segmentation in later stages. Next, we employ a learned mixture model to classify all segments. The model combines multiple softmax regression classifiers learned on specific bag-of-word representations using different parameterizations of a descriptor. In the final stage, we filter irrelevant and duplicate detections using a greedy method in consideration of the segment hierarchy. We experimentally evaluate our approach on recently published real-world datasets to detect pedestrians, cars, and cyclists.