Rear-end collision warning system on account of a rear-end monitoring camera

The objective of this study is to establish a rear-end collision warning system for an advance safety vehicle (ASV) by using a mounted rear-end monitoring camera. The paper attempted to analyze the driving environmental data and built up the rear-end collision warning logic on account of image processing. The main idea of the warning system is to prevent accidents caused by inattentive drivers. In recent years, the parking assistance system with ultrasonic sensors and rear-end camera, has almost become the basic equipment in vehicles. However, the parking assistance system is only activated when the equipped vehicle is reversing. This study tries to apply the rear-end monitoring camera´s images as the rear-end collision surveillance for approaching driving. This improves the camera´s utility when the parking assistance system in idleness. In this study, the practical system is mainly equipped to a testing car with an industry personal computer, an on-board LCD and a CCD camera. By image processing, the relative distance, velocity, and acceleration to the follower vehicle are measured. This paper developed the dynamic threshold from the relative data and the drivers´ perceptive reaction time to issue the warning for the drivers. The alpha-beta-gamma filter was applied to process the relative data smoothly. The experiment result was successful on the off-line video tests. This study convinces that the developed rear-end warning system could appropriately warn the equipped driver when its following car does not keep in a safe distance.