A vision-based road edge detection algorithm

In the paper, a road edge identification algorithm is developed. The new idea of this method is to use natural road edge, as well as the white strip for road information acquisition. The natural road edge does not be easily polluted like the white lane maker does, so it indicates better adaptability to the outdoor environment. In the algorithm, we use both the pixel feature and the frame feature to identify the road edge, which is referred to as the whole road model. Because several road constrains is used to ensure the road edge detection, the algorithm is immune to the influence of the image disturbance. The algorithm of the road edge identification includes two stages: initialization detection and tracing detection. The initialization stage detects the road edge from the whole road image. The trace algorithm uses the region of interest (ROI) to limit detecting area, which can save much time. In order to give a measure of the reliability of the road detecting result, this paper presents a road edge identification estimation function, which can estimate the reliability of the road edge.