무인 자율주행 차량을 위한 단안 카메라 기반 실시간 주행 환경 인식 기법에 관한 연구

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기공학부, 2014. 2. 서승우.Homo Faber, refers to humans as controlling the environments through tools. From the beginning of the world, humans create tools for chasing the convenient life. The desire for the rapid movement let the human ride on horseback, make the wagon and finally make the vehicle. The vehicle made humans possible to travel the long distance very quickly as well as conveniently. However, since human being itself is imperfect, plenty of people have died due to the car accident, and people are dying at this moment. The research for autonomous vehicle has been conducted to satisfy the humans desire of the safety as the best alternative. And, the dream of autonomous vehicle will be come true in the near future. For the implementation of autonomous vehicle, many kinds of techniques are required, among which, the recognition of the environment around the vehicle is one of the most fundamental and important problems. For the recognition of surrounding objects many kinds of sensors can be utilized, however, the monocular camera can collect the largest information among sensors as well as can be utilized for the variety of purposes, and can be adopted for the various vehicle types due to the good price competitiveness. I expect that the research using the monocular camera for autonomous vehicle is very practical and useful. In this dissertation, I cover four important recognition problems for autonomous driving by using monocular camera in vehicular environment. Firstly, to drive the way autonomously the vehicle has to recognize lanes and keep its lane. However, the detection of lane markings under the various illuminant variation is very difficult in the image processing area. Nevertheless, it must be solved for the autonomous driving. The first research topic is the robust lane marking extraction under the illumination variations for multilane detection. I proposed the new lane marking extraction filter that can detect the imperfect lane markings as well as the new false positive cancelling algorithm that can eliminate noise markings. This approach can extract lane markings successfully even under the bad illumination conditions. Secondly, the problem to tackle, is if there is no lane marking on the road, then how the autonomous vehicle can recognize the road to run? In addition, what is the current lane position of the road? The latter is the important question since we can make a decision for lane change or keeping depending on the current position of lane. The second research is for handling those two problems, and I proposed the approach for the fusing the road detection and the lane position estimation. Thirdly, to drive more safely, keeping the safety distance is very important. Additionally, many equipments for the driving safety require the distance information. Measuring accurate inter-vehicle distance by using monocular camera and line laser is the third research topic. To measure the inter-vehicle distance, I illuminate the line laser on the front side of vehicle, and measure the length of the laser line and lane width in the image. Based on the imaging geometry, the distance calculation problem can be solved with accuracy. There are still many of important problems are remaining to be solved, and I proposed some approaches by using the monocular camera to handle the important problems. I expect very active researches will be continuously conducted and, based on the researches, the era of autonomous vehicle will come in the near future.1 Introduction 1.1 Background and Motivations 1.2 Contributions and Outline of the Dissertation 1.2.1 Illumination-Tolerant Lane Marking Extraction for Multilane Detection 1.2.2 Fusing Road Detection and Lane Position Estimation for the Robust Road Boundary Estimation 1.2.3 Accurate Inter-Vehicle Distance Measurement based on Monocular Camera and Line Laser 2 Illumination-Tolerant Lane Marking Extraction for Multilane Detection 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Lane Marking Candidate Extraction Filter 2.2.1 Requirements of the Filter 2.2.2 A Comparison of Filter Characteristics 2.2.3 Cone Hat Filter 2.3 Overview of the Proposed Algorithm 2.3.1 Filter Width Estimation 2.3.2 Top Hat (Cone Hat) Filtering 2.3.3 Reiterated Extraction 2.3.4 False Positive Cancelling 2.3.4.1 Lane Marking Center Point Extraction 2.3.4.2 Fast Center Point Segmentation 2.3.4.3 Vanishing Point Detection 2.3.4.4 Segment Extraction 2.3.4.5 False Positive Filtering 2.4 Experiments and Evaluation 2.4.1 Experimental Set-up 2.4.2 Conventional Algorithm for Evaluation 2.4.2.1 Global threshold 2.4.2.2 Positive Negative Gradient 2.4.2.3 Local Threshold 2.4.2.4 Symmetry Local Threshold 2.4.2.5 Double Extraction using Symmetry Local Threshold 2.4.2.6 Gaussian Filter 2.4.3 Experimental Results 2.4.4 Summary 3 Fusing Road Detection and Lane Position Estimation for the Robust Road Boundary Estimation 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Chromaticity-based Flood-fill Method 3.2.1 Illuminant-Invariant Space 3.2.2 Road Pixel Selection 3.2.3 Flood-fill Algorithm 3.3 Lane Position Estimation 3.3.1 Lane Marking Extraction 3.3.2 Proposed Lane Position Detection Algorithm 3.3.3 Birds-eye View Transformation by using the Proposed Dynamic Homography Matrix Generation 3.3.4 Next Lane Position Estimation based on the Cross-ratio 3.3.5 Forward-looking View Transformation 3.4 Information Fusion Between Road Detection and Lane Position Estimation 3.4.1 The Case of Detection Failures 3.4.2 The Benefit of Information Fusion 3.5 Experiments and Evaluation 3.6 Summary 4 Accurate Inter-Vehicle Distance Measurement based on Monocular Camera and Line Laser 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Proposed Distance Measurement Algorithm 4.3 Experiments and Evaluation 4.3.1 Experimental System Set-up 4.3.2 Experimental Results 4.4 Summary 5 ConclusionDocto

A high speed Tri-Vision system for automotive applications

Purpose: Cameras are excellent ways of non-invasively monitoring the interior and exterior of vehicles. In particular, high speed stereovision and multivision systems are important for transport applications such as driver eye tracking or collision avoidance. This paper addresses the synchronisation problem which arises when multivision camera systems are used to capture the high speed motion common in such applications. Methods: An experimental, high-speed tri-vision camera system intended for real-time driver eye-blink and saccade measurement was designed, developed, implemented and tested using prototype, ultra-high dynamic range, automotive-grade image sensors specifically developed by E2V (formerly Atmel) Grenoble SA as part of the European FP6 project – sensation (advanced sensor development for attention stress, vigilance and sleep/wakefulness monitoring). Results : The developed system can sustain frame rates of 59.8 Hz at the full stereovision resolution of 1280 × 480 but this can reach 750 Hz when a 10 k pixel Region of Interest (ROI) is used, with a maximum global shutter speed of 1/48000 s and a shutter efficiency of 99.7%. The data can be reliably transmitted uncompressed over standard copper Camera-Link® cables over 5 metres. The synchronisation error between the left and right stereo images is less than 100 ps and this has been verified both electrically and optically. Synchronisation is automatically established at boot-up and maintained during resolution changes. A third camera in the set can be configured independently. The dynamic range of the 10bit sensors exceeds 123 dB with a spectral sensitivity extending well into the infra-red range. Conclusion: The system was subjected to a comprehensive testing protocol, which confirms that the salient requirements for the driver monitoring application are adequately met and in some respects, exceeded. The synchronisation technique presented may also benefit several other automotive stereovision applications including near and far-field obstacle detection and collision avoidance, road condition monitoring and others.Partially funded by the EU FP6 through the IST-507231 SENSATION project.peer-reviewe

3D Visual Perception for Self-Driving Cars using a Multi-Camera System: Calibration, Mapping, Localization, and Obstacle Detection

Cameras are a crucial exteroceptive sensor for self-driving cars as they are low-cost and small, provide appearance information about the environment, and work in various weather conditions. They can be used for multiple purposes such as visual navigation and obstacle detection. We can use a surround multi-camera system to cover the full 360-degree field-of-view around the car. In this way, we avoid blind spots which can otherwise lead to accidents. To minimize the number of cameras needed for surround perception, we utilize fisheye cameras. Consequently, standard vision pipelines for 3D mapping, visual localization, obstacle detection, etc. need to be adapted to take full advantage of the availability of multiple cameras rather than treat each camera individually. In addition, processing of fisheye images has to be supported. In this paper, we describe the camera calibration and subsequent processing pipeline for multi-fisheye-camera systems developed as part of the V-Charge project. This project seeks to enable automated valet parking for self-driving cars. Our pipeline is able to precisely calibrate multi-camera systems, build sparse 3D maps for visual navigation, visually localize the car with respect to these maps, generate accurate dense maps, as well as detect obstacles based on real-time depth map extraction

Pushbroom Stereo for High-Speed Navigation in Cluttered Environments

We present a novel stereo vision algorithm that is capable of obstacle detection on a mobile-CPU processor at 120 frames per second. Our system performs a subset of standard block-matching stereo processing, searching only for obstacles at a single depth. By using an onboard IMU and state-estimator, we can recover the position of obstacles at all other depths, building and updating a full depth-map at framerate. Here, we describe both the algorithm and our implementation on a high-speed, small UAV, flying at over 20 MPH (9 m/s) close to obstacles. The system requires no external sensing or computation and is, to the best of our knowledge, the first high-framerate stereo detection system running onboard a small UAV

Digitisation of a moving assembly operation using multiple depth imaging sensors

Several manufacturing operations continue to be manual even in today’s highly automated industry because the complexity of such operations makes them heavily reliant on human skills, intellect and experience. This work aims to aid the automation of one such operation, the wheel loading operation on the trim and final moving assembly line in automotive production. It proposes a new method that uses multiple low-cost depth imaging sensors, commonly used in gaming, to acquire and digitise key shopfloor data associated with the operation, such as motion characteristics of the vehicle body on the moving conveyor line and the angular positions of alignment features of the parts to be assembled, in order to inform an intelligent automation solution. Experiments are conducted to test the performance of the proposed method across various assembly conditions, and the results are validated against an industry standard method using laser tracking. Some disadvantages of the method are discussed, and suggestions for improvements are suggested. The proposed method has the potential to be adopted to enable the automation of a wide range of moving assembly operations in multiple sectors of the manufacturing industry

MVCSLAM: Mono-Vision Corner SLAM for Autonomous Micro-Helicopters in GPS Denied Environments

We present a real-time vision navigation and ranging method (VINAR) for the purpose of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) using monocular vision. Our navigation strategy assumes a GPS denied unknown environment, whose indoor architecture is represented via corner based feature points obtained through a monocular camera. We experiment on a case study mission of vision based SLAM through a conventional maze of corridors in a large building with an autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV). We propose a method for gathering useful landmarks from a monocular camera for SLAM use. We make use of the corners by exploiting the architectural features of the manmade indoors

Vision Based Collaborative Localization and Path Planning for Micro Aerial Vehicles

Autonomous micro aerial vehicles (MAV) have gained immense popularity in both the commercial and research worlds over the last few years. Due to their small size and agility, MAVs are considered to have great potential for civil and industrial tasks such as photography, search and rescue, exploration, inspection and surveillance. Autonomy on MAVs usually involves solving the major problems of localization and path planning. While GPS is a popular choice for localization for many MAV platforms today, it suffers from issues such as inaccurate estimation around large structures, and complete unavailability in remote areas/indoor scenarios. From the alternative sensing mechanisms, cameras arise as an attractive choice to be an onboard sensor due to the richness of information captured, along with small size and inexpensiveness. Another consideration that comes into picture for micro aerial vehicles is the fact that these small platforms suffer from inability to fly for long amounts of time or carry heavy payload, scenarios that can be solved by allocating a group, or a swarm of MAVs to perform a task than just one. Collaboration between multiple vehicles allows for better accuracy of estimation, task distribution and mission efficiency. Combining these rationales, this dissertation presents collaborative vision based localization and path planning frameworks. Although these were created as two separate steps, the ideal application would contain both of them as a loosely coupled localization and planning algorithm. A forward-facing monocular camera onboard each MAV is considered as the sole sensor for computing pose estimates. With this minimal setup, this dissertation first investigates methods to perform feature-based localization, with the possibility of fusing two types of localization data: one that is computed onboard each MAV, and the other that comes from relative measurements between the vehicles. Feature based methods were preferred over direct methods for vision because of the relative ease with which tangible data packets can be transferred between vehicles, and because feature data allows for minimal data transfer compared to large images. Inspired by techniques from multiple view geometry and structure from motion, this localization algorithm presents a decentralized full 6-degree of freedom pose estimation method complete with a consistent fusion methodology to obtain robust estimates only at discrete instants, thus not requiring constant communication between vehicles. This method was validated on image data obtained from high fidelity simulations as well as real life MAV tests. These vision based collaborative constraints were also applied to the problem of path planning with a focus on performing uncertainty-aware planning, where the algorithm is responsible for generating not only a valid, collision-free path, but also making sure that this path allows for successful localization throughout. As joint multi-robot planning can be a computationally intractable problem, planning was divided into two steps from a vision-aware perspective. As the first step for improving localization performance is having access to a better map of features, a next-best-multi-view algorithm was developed which can compute the best viewpoints for multiple vehicles that can improve an existing sparse reconstruction. This algorithm contains a cost function containing vision-based heuristics that determines the quality of expected images from any set of viewpoints; which is minimized through an efficient evolutionary strategy known as Covariance Matrix Adaption (CMA-ES) that can handle very high dimensional sample spaces. In the second step, a sampling based planner called Vision-Aware RRT* (VA-RRT*) was developed which includes similar vision heuristics in an information gain based framework in order to drive individual vehicles towards areas that can benefit feature tracking and thus localization. Both steps of the planning framework were tested and validated using results from simulation