Locating nearby vehicles on highway at daytime based on the front vision of a moving car

Being aware of nearby vehicles is important for autonomous vehicle or camera-assisted car running on highway. In this research, we focus on detecting/locating nearby leading vehicles and passing vehicles from the vehicle behind. By combining the detection of vehicle´s underneath shadow and the confirmation of characteristic pattern, a reliable way of finding and locating leading vehicles on highway is derived. For passing vehicles in the neighboring lane, we apply a similar shadow detection scheme to detect the possible vehicle sideline on ground. Using the information of detected highway lane border, our scheme allocates an area of interests and checks the edge points density in that area to confirm the existence of neighboring vehicles. Our proposed schemes are efficient and can be run in real-time. Testing with dozens of vehicles shows successful results.