Vision-based pavement marking detection and condition assessment : a case study

Pavement markings constitute an effective way of conveying regulations and guidance to drivers. They constitute the most fundamental way to communicate with road users, thus, greatly contributing to ensuring safety and order on roads. However, due to the increasingly extensive traffic demand, pavement markings are subject to a series of deterioration issues (e.g., wear and tear). Markings in poor condition typically manifest as being blurred or even missing in certain places. The need for proper maintenance strategies on roadway markings, such as repainting, can only be determined based on a comprehensive understanding of their as-is worn condition. Given the fact that an efficient, automated and accurate approach to collect such condition information is lacking in practice, this study proposes a vision-based framework for pavement marking detection and condition assessment. A hybrid feature detector and a threshold-based method were used for line marking identification and classification. For each identified line marking, its worn/blurred severity level was then quantified in terms of worn percentage at a pixel level. The damage estimation results were compared to manual measurements for evaluation, indicating that the proposed method is capable of providing indicative knowledge about the as-is condition of pavement markings. This paper demonstrates the promising potential of computer vision in the infrastructure sector, in terms of implementing a wider range of managerial operations for roadway management

Lane and Road Marking Detection with a High Resolution Automotive Radar for Automated Driving

Die Automobilindustrie erlebt gerade einen beispiellosen Wandel, und die Fahrerassistenz und das automatisierte Fahren spielen dabei eine entscheidende Rolle. Automatisiertes Fahren System umfasst haupts\"achlich drei Schritte: Wahrnehmung und Modellierung der Umgebung, Fahrtrichtungsplanung, und Fahrzeugsteuerung. Mit einer guten Wahrnehmung und Modellierung der Umgebung kann ein Fahrzeug Funktionen wie intelligenter Tempomat, Notbremsassistent, Spurwechselassistent, usw. erfolgreich durchf\"uhren. F\"ur Fahrfunktionen, die die Fahrpuren erkennen m\"ussen, werden gegenw\"artig ausnahmslos Kamerasensoren eingesetzt. Bei wechselnden Lichtverh\"altnissen, unzureichender Beleuchtung oder bei Sichtbehinderungen z.B. durch Nebel k\"onnen Videokameras aber empfindlich gest\"ort werden. Um diese Nachteile auszugleichen, wird in dieser Doktorarbeit eine \glqq Radar\textendash taugliche\grqq{} Fahrbahnmakierungerkennung entwickelt, mit der das Fahrzeug die Fahrspuren bei allen Lichtverh\"altnissen erkennen kann. Dazu k\"onnen bereits im Fahrzeug verbaute Radare eingesetzt werden. Die heutigen Fahrbahnmarkierungen k\"onnen mit Kamerasensoren sehr gut erfasst werden. Wegen unzureichender R\"uckstreueigenschaften der existierenden Fahrbahnmarkierungen f\"ur Radarwellen werden diese vom Radar nicht erkannt. Um dies zu bewerkstelligen, werden in dieser Arbeit die R\"uckstreueigenschaften von verschiedenen Reflektortypen, sowohl durch Simulationen als auch mit praktischen Messungen, untersucht und ein Reflektortyp vorgeschlagen, der zur Verarbeitung in heutige Fahrbahnmakierungen oder sogar f\"ur direkten Verbau in der Fahrbahn geeignet ist. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt dieser Doktorarbeit ist der Einsatz von K\"unstliche Intelligenz (KI), um die Fahrspuren auch mit Radar zu detektieren und zu klassifizieren. Die aufgenommenen Radardaten werden mittels semantischer Segmentierung analysiert und Fahrspurverl\"aufe sowie Freifl\"achenerkennung detektiert. Gleichzeitig wird das Potential von KI\textendash tauglichen Umgebungverstehen mit bildgebenden Radardaten aufgezeigt

Visual computing techniques for automated LIDAR annotation with application to intelligent transport systems

106 p.The concept of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) refers to the application of communication and information technologies to transport with the aim of making it more efficient, sustainable, and safer. Computer vision is increasingly being used for ITS applications, such as infrastructure management or advanced driver-assistance systems. The latest progress in computer vision, thanks to the Deep Learning techniques, and the race for autonomous vehicle, have created a growing requirement for annotated data in the automotive industry. The data to be annotated is composed by images captured by the cameras of the vehicles and LIDAR data in the form of point clouds. LIDAR sensors are used for tasks such as object detection and localization. The capacity of LIDAR sensors to identify objects at long distances and to provide estimations of their distance make them very appealing sensors for autonomous driving.This thesis presents a method to automate the annotation of lane markings with LIDAR data. The state of the art of lane markings detection based on LIDAR data is reviewed and a novel method is presented. The precision of the method is evaluated against manually annotated data. Its usefulness is also evaluated, measuring the reduction of the required time to annotate new data thanks to the automatically generated pre-annotations. Finally, the conclusions of this thesis and possible future research lines are presented

Visual computing techniques for automated LIDAR annotation with application to intelligent transport systems

106 p.The concept of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) refers to the application of communication and information technologies to transport with the aim of making it more efficient, sustainable, and safer. Computer vision is increasingly being used for ITS applications, such as infrastructure management or advanced driver-assistance systems. The latest progress in computer vision, thanks to the Deep Learning techniques, and the race for autonomous vehicle, have created a growing requirement for annotated data in the automotive industry. The data to be annotated is composed by images captured by the cameras of the vehicles and LIDAR data in the form of point clouds. LIDAR sensors are used for tasks such as object detection and localization. The capacity of LIDAR sensors to identify objects at long distances and to provide estimations of their distance make them very appealing sensors for autonomous driving.This thesis presents a method to automate the annotation of lane markings with LIDAR data. The state of the art of lane markings detection based on LIDAR data is reviewed and a novel method is presented. The precision of the method is evaluated against manually annotated data. Its usefulness is also evaluated, measuring the reduction of the required time to annotate new data thanks to the automatically generated pre-annotations. Finally, the conclusions of this thesis and possible future research lines are presented

Road environment modeling using robust perspective analysis and recursive Bayesian segmentation

Recently, vision-based advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) have received a new increased interest to enhance driving safety. In particular, due to its high performance–cost ratio, mono-camera systems are arising as the main focus of this field of work. In this paper we present a novel on-board road modeling and vehicle detection system, which is a part of the result of the European I-WAY project. The system relies on a robust estimation of the perspective of the scene, which adapts to the dynamics of the vehicle and generates a stabilized rectified image of the road plane. This rectified plane is used by a recursive Bayesian classi- fier, which classifies pixels as belonging to different classes corresponding to the elements of interest of the scenario. This stage works as an intermediate layer that isolates subsequent modules since it absorbs the inherent variability of the scene. The system has been tested on-road, in different scenarios, including varied illumination and adverse weather conditions, and the results have been proved to be remarkable even for such complex scenarios