Egocentric Vision-based Future Vehicle Localization for Intelligent Driving Assistance Systems

Predicting the future location of vehicles is essential for safety-critical applications such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. This paper introduces a novel approach to simultaneously predict both the location and scale of target vehicles in the first-person (egocentric) view of an ego-vehicle. We present a multi-stream recurrent neural network (RNN) encoder-decoder model that separately captures both object location and scale and pixel-level observations for future vehicle localization. We show that incorporating dense optical flow improves prediction results significantly since it captures information about motion as well as appearance change. We also find that explicitly modeling future motion of the ego-vehicle improves the prediction accuracy, which could be especially beneficial in intelligent and automated vehicles that have motion planning capability. To evaluate the performance of our approach, we present a new dataset of first-person videos collected from a variety of scenarios at road intersections, which are particularly challenging moments for prediction because vehicle trajectories are diverse and dynamic.Comment: To appear on ICRA 201

An Empirical Evaluation of Deep Learning on Highway Driving

Numerous groups have applied a variety of deep learning techniques to computer vision problems in highway perception scenarios. In this paper, we presented a number of empirical evaluations of recent deep learning advances. Computer vision, combined with deep learning, has the potential to bring about a relatively inexpensive, robust solution to autonomous driving. To prepare deep learning for industry uptake and practical applications, neural networks will require large data sets that represent all possible driving environments and scenarios. We collect a large data set of highway data and apply deep learning and computer vision algorithms to problems such as car and lane detection. We show how existing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can be used to perform lane and vehicle detection while running at frame rates required for a real-time system. Our results lend credence to the hypothesis that deep learning holds promise for autonomous driving.Comment: Added a video for lane detectio

Human Motion Trajectory Prediction: A Survey

With growing numbers of intelligent autonomous systems in human environments, the ability of such systems to perceive, understand and anticipate human behavior becomes increasingly important. Specifically, predicting future positions of dynamic agents and planning considering such predictions are key tasks for self-driving vehicles, service robots and advanced surveillance systems. This paper provides a survey of human motion trajectory prediction. We review, analyze and structure a large selection of work from different communities and propose a taxonomy that categorizes existing methods based on the motion modeling approach and level of contextual information used. We provide an overview of the existing datasets and performance metrics. We discuss limitations of the state of the art and outline directions for further research.Comment: Submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 37 page

Determining the relative position of vehicles considering bidirectional traffic scenarios in VANETS

Researchers pertaining to both academia and industry have shown strong interest in developing and improving the existing critical ITS solutions. In some of the existing solutions, specially the ones that aim at providing context aware services, the knowledge of relative positioning of one node by other nodes becomes crucial. In this paper we explore, apart from the conventional use of GPS data, the applicability of image processing to aid in determining the relative positions of nodes in a vehicular network. Experiments conducted show that both the use of location information and image processing works well and can be deployed depending on the requirement of the application. Our experiments show that the results that used location information were affected by GPS errors, while the use of image processing, although producing more accurate results, require significantly more processing power

Perception Intelligence Integrated Vehicle-to-Vehicle Optical Camera Communication.

Ubiquitous usage of cameras and LEDs in modern road and aerial vehicles open up endless opportunities for novel applications in intelligent machine navigation, communication, and networking. To this end, in this thesis work, we hypothesize the benefit of dual-mode usage of vehicular built-in cameras through novel machine perception capabilities combined with optical camera communication (OCC). Current key conception of understanding a line-of-sight (LOS) scenery is from the aspect of object, event, and road situation detection. However, the idea of blending the non-line-of-sight (NLOS) information with the LOS information to achieve a see-through vision virtually is new. This improves the assistive driving performance by enabling a machine to see beyond occlusion. Another aspect of OCC in the vehicular setup is to understand the nature of mobility and its impact on the optical communication channel quality. The research questions gathered from both the car-car mobility modelling, and evaluating a working setup of OCC communication channel can also be inherited to aerial vehicular situations like drone-drone OCC. The aim of this thesis is to answer the research questions along these new application domains, particularly, (i) how to enable a virtual see-through perception in the car assisting system that alerts the human driver about the visible and invisible critical driving events to help drive more safely, (ii) how transmitter-receiver cars behaves while in the mobility and the overall channel performance of OCC in motion modality, (iii) how to help rescue lost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) through coordinated localization with fusion of OCC and WiFi, (iv) how to model and simulate an in-field drone swarm operation experience to design and validate UAV coordinated localization for group of positioning distressed drones. In this regard, in this thesis, we present the end-to-end system design, proposed novel algorithms to solve the challenges in applying such a system, and evaluation results through experimentation and/or simulation

A Study on Recent Developments and Issues with Obstacle Detection Systems for Automated Vehicles

This paper reviews current developments and discusses some critical issues with obstacle detection systems for automated vehicles. The concept of autonomous driving is the driver towards future mobility. Obstacle detection systems play a crucial role in implementing and deploying autonomous driving on our roads and city streets. The current review looks at technology and existing systems for obstacle detection. Specifically, we look at the performance of LIDAR, RADAR, vision cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and IR and review their capabilities and behaviour in a number of different situations: during daytime, at night, in extreme weather conditions, in urban areas, in the presence of smooths surfaces, in situations where emergency service vehicles need to be detected and recognised, and in situations where potholes need to be observed and measured. It is suggested that combining different technologies for obstacle detection gives a more accurate representation of the driving environment. In particular, when looking at technological solutions for obstacle detection in extreme weather conditions (rain, snow, fog), and in some specific situations in urban areas (shadows, reflections, potholes, insufficient illumination), although already quite advanced, the current developments appear to be not sophisticated enough to guarantee 100% precision and accuracy, hence further valiant effort is needed