A robust vehicle detecting and tracking system for wet weather conditions using the IMAP-VISION image processing board

We present a robust vehicle detecting and tracking system for highway scenes of both dry and wet weather conditions taken from a forward-looking vehicle mounted camera. The system comprises the potential vehicle search, vehicle validation, and vehicle tracking processes. In order to overcome reduced visibility conditions, image normalization is performed automatically according to input image contrast and a weak edge grouping technique is used for preventing mass detections during the potential vehicle search process. The system runs at a rate of 15 frames/sec using a PC with the IMAP-VISION realtime image processing board. Results of experiments on image sequences of various highway scenes are presented