On board data fusion and decision system used for obstacle detection: a network and a real time approach

The paper describes a system and an algorithm used for multi-sensorial data fusion. The primary goal is to meet real time constraints with perspectives of low costs products. So the authors have chosen to use binary sensors that supply a relatively low amount of data, which allows the implementation of fast algorithms in order to compute a 2-D representation of a vehicle environment on a one DSP board system. The original parts of this work are located in the definition of system architecture (amount of data dispatching, asynchronism managing and processes localization), and in the implementation of a sub-optimal Kalman like algorithm (with classification rules before decision). the whole system part of a vehicle avoidance demonstrator, and is organized around a PC/AT bus