Active and intelligent sensing of road obstacles: Application to the European Eureka-PROMETHEUS project

The authors address the problem of road obstacle detection. A sensor composed of an eyesafe laser range finder coupled with a charge coupled device (CCD) camera is proposed. This sensor is mounted in front of a vehicle. The basic idea is to first determine 2-D visual targets in intensity images of the camera. The range finder is then used not only to confirm or reject the real existence of the detected visual targets but also to acquire 3-D information of the confirmed visual targets. The central problem of this strategy is the method of detection of 2-D visual targets from intensity images of a road scene. In the method, line segments are considered as significant features. The concept of a line segment of interest and the concept of a dominant line segment are used. Two-imensional visual targets can be effectively determined with the help of the identification of the dominant line segments in an image. The range finder was used to confirm or reject a 2-D visual target