Visual vehicle detection and tracking based on the 'sign pattern'

Real-time vehicle detection and tracking applicable for outdoor mobile robots on a structured road is proposed. The method is based on a locomotion strategy known as 'sign pattern based stereotyped motion'. The sign pattern of a vehicle is the shadow underneath. The robot detects a vehicle from a distance of 30 m with a domestic video camera and extracts its front shape in real-time processing. The distance between the robot and vehicle, and the velocity and width of the vehicle are estimated during the tracking process. In addition, the center of the vehicle in two-dimensional imaging is determined during the tracking process to estimate the type of motion. The accuracy rate of vehicle width measurement based on the shadow underneath is better than 90% in practice, which can be adequately used for vehicle avoidance applications. The applied method has been tested on roads covered with different types of shadows as well as under different weather conditions. The results of the experiments verify the valid...

[1]  K. Saneyoshi,et al.  3-D Image Recognition System For Drive Assist , 1993, Proceedings of the Intelligent Vehicles '93 Symposium.

[2]  Hideo Mori,et al.  Proper selection of sonar and visual sensors for vehicle detection and avoidance , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'94).

[3]  Rahul Sukthankar,et al.  RACCOON: A Real-time Autonomous Car Chaser Operating Optimally At Night , 1993, Proceedings of the Intelligent Vehicles '93 Symposium.

[4]  Hideo Mori,et al.  A new approach for real time moving vehicle detection , 1993, Proceedings of 1993 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS '93).

[5]  Thomas S. Huang,et al.  Vehicle-Type Motion Estimation From Multi-Frame Images , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[6]  Volker Graefe,et al.  Object detection in real-time , 1991 .

[7]  Takeo Kanade,et al.  Car Recognition for the CMU Navlab , 1990 .

[8]  Hideo Mori,et al.  A mobile robot strategy stereotyped motion by sign pattern , 1991 .

[9]  Hormoz Shariat,et al.  Motion Estimation with More than Two Frames , 1990, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[10]  Larry S. Davis,et al.  Algorithms for road navigation , 1992 .

[11]  Andreas Kuehnle,et al.  Symmetry-based recognition of vehicle rears , 1991, Pattern Recognit. Lett..

[12]  Werner von Seelen,et al.  Intensity and Edge-Based Symmetry Detection Applied to Car-Following , 1992, ECCV.

[13]  R. Nevatia,et al.  Detecting moving objects from a moving platform , 1992, Proceedings 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.