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Monocular computer vision aided road vehicle driving for safety

  • US 6,765,480 B2
  • Filed: 04/10/2002
  • Issued: 07/20/2004
  • Est. Priority Date: 07/12/2001
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A versatile monocular computer vision method of processing and analyzing a sequence of monocular road/scene images captured by a single monocular image capture device for aiding road vehicle driving;

  • said method comprising the steps of;

    i. by processing and analyzing the monocular road/scene images, detecting a distance to a front obstacle or front vehicle;

    ii. by processing and analyzing the monocular road/scene images, calculating a vehicle direction relative to a lane direction;

    iii. by processing an analyzing the monocular road/scene images, determining a left/right location of said vehicle in a road lane; and

    iv. estimating a speed of said vehicle, wherein said step of detecting a distance to a front obstacle or vehicle comprises the steps of;

    a. from a sequence of road/scene images extracting two lane markings on both sides of said road lane and then finding an intersection point of said lane markings;

    said intersection point being a vanishing point of said road lane;

    b. from said vanishing point and a known focal length of a lens of a camera, finding a pitch angle and a yaw angle of said lane markings with respect to a camera coordinate system;

    c. from said pitch angle and a height of said camera, calculating a distance from a location of said camera to a point which is an intersection point of an optical axis of said camera and a road plane;

    d. from said images, finding horizontal lines that indicate intersections of rear wheels of front vehicles and said road plane, selecting a nearest horizontal line that is in said road lane, and judging that said horizontal line is located above or below an image center;

    e. from said known camera focal length, camera height, pitch angle, and a vertical distance from said horizontal line to said image center, finding said distance from said camera location to said rear wheel of said front vehicle or obstacle.

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