Embodiments include a method for ground surface segmentation on sparse Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) point clouds comprising: reading a LiDAR point cloud from a LiDAR sensor, the LiDAR point cloud comprising data representing one or more objects in physical surroundings detected by the LiDAR sensor; voxelizing the LiDAR point cloud to produce a three-dimensional representation of each of the one or more objects; constructing a maximum height map from the three-dimensional representation of each of the one or more objects, the maximum height map comprising a two-dimensional mapping of spatial points representing each of the one or more objects; performing minimum filtering on the spatial points of the maximum height map; and classifying each spatial point as a ground point or a non-ground point based on the minimum filtering of each spatial point.