Environmental perception and situation assessment for an advanced highway assistant

Environmental perception through sensor fusion for automotive applications is an intensive research area. Since the advent of the first driver assistance systems researchers have worked on multi sensor systems that perceived the whole surrounding traffic scene. At Volkswagen research diverse sensor and fusion configurations have been under examination over the last few years. Currently a Highway Assistant is being under development that focuses on well structured environments and ultimately aims to automate certain driving tasks. This paper describes the perception part from sensors and sensor fusion up to situation and risk assessment.