Real-time collision avoidance at road-crossings on board the Prometheus-ProLab 2 vehicle

The control system presented in this paper is part of the European Prometheus-ProLab 2 test vehicle which proposes several new significant aids to the driver for an enhanced traffic safety. The goal of this system is to detect and to provide a low-level interpretation of the movements of side-obstacles (vehicles) occurring at crossings. The system is composed of two video cameras and a real-time vision machine (Transvision) on which a specific software performing the obstacle detection and interpretation task has been implemented. The proposed system provides reliable and robust (real-time) control of standard intersections up to a distance of about 150 m.