Road curb and lanes detection for autonomous driving on urban scenarios

This paper addresses a framework for road curb and lanes detection in the context of urban autonomous driving, with particular emphasis on unmarked roads. Based on a 3D point cloud, the 3D parameters of several curb models are computed using curvature features and Conditional Random Fields (CRF). Information regarding obstacles is also computed based on the 3D point cloud, including vehicles and urban elements such as lampposts, fences, walls, etc. In addition, a gray-scale image provides the input for computing lane markings whenever they are present and visible in the scene. A high level decision-making system yields accurate information regarding the number and location of drivable lanes, based on curbs, lane markings, and obstacles. Our algorithm can deal with curbs of different curvature and heights, from as low as 3 cm, in a range up to 20 m. The system has been successfully tested on images from the KITTI data-set in real traffic conditions, containing different number of lanes, marked and unmarked roads, as well as curbs of quite different height. Although preliminary results are promising, further research is needed in order to deal with intersection scenes where no curbs are present and lane markings are absent or misleading.