Method to determine distance of an object from an automated vehicle with a monocular device
First Claim
1. A method of determining the distance of an object from an automated vehicle, said method comprising:
- equipping an automated vehicle with a monocular image acquiring device, said device located on the automated vehicle at a predefined height above a plane of a road on which the automated vehicle travels;
capturing images of an environment proximate to the vehicle, wherein the images of the environment are taken at time intervals by the device;
classifying, by an image processing system, an object in the images;
associating, by the image processing system, the object with an object-class;
determining, by the image processing system, respective position data from the images using a pinhole camera model and based on the object-class, said position data indicative of a position of a reference point of the object with respect to the plane of the road in world coordinates;
estimating a scaling factor of the pinhole camera model using a Bayes estimator on the position data as observations and under the assumption that the reference point of the object is located on the plane of the road with a predefined probability; and
calculating a distance of the object from the automated vehicle based on the scaling factor using the pinhole camera model, wherein an angle of inclination is used as the position indication that a view ray adopts with respect to the plane of the road, said view ray leading from a center of the automated vehicle and projected perpendicular onto the plane of the road and from a fixed point arranged at a known distance therefrom to the reference point of the object.
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Abstract
A method of determining the distance of an object from an automated vehicle based on images taken by a monocular image acquiring device. The object is recognized with an object-class by means of an image processing system. Respective position data are determined from the images using a pinhole camera model based on the object-class. Position data indicating in world coordinates the position of a reference point of the object with respect to the plane of the road is used with a scaling factor of the pinhole camera model estimated by means of a Bayes estimator using the position data as observations and under the assumption that the reference point of the object is located on the plane of the road with a predefined probability. The distance of the object from the automated vehicle is calculated from the estimated scaling factor using the pinhole camera model.
17 Citations
11 Claims
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1. A method of determining the distance of an object from an automated vehicle, said method comprising:
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equipping an automated vehicle with a monocular image acquiring device, said device located on the automated vehicle at a predefined height above a plane of a road on which the automated vehicle travels; capturing images of an environment proximate to the vehicle, wherein the images of the environment are taken at time intervals by the device; classifying, by an image processing system, an object in the images; associating, by the image processing system, the object with an object-class; determining, by the image processing system, respective position data from the images using a pinhole camera model and based on the object-class, said position data indicative of a position of a reference point of the object with respect to the plane of the road in world coordinates; estimating a scaling factor of the pinhole camera model using a Bayes estimator on the position data as observations and under the assumption that the reference point of the object is located on the plane of the road with a predefined probability; and calculating a distance of the object from the automated vehicle based on the scaling factor using the pinhole camera model, wherein an angle of inclination is used as the position indication that a view ray adopts with respect to the plane of the road, said view ray leading from a center of the automated vehicle and projected perpendicular onto the plane of the road and from a fixed point arranged at a known distance therefrom to the reference point of the object. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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Specification