Vision-based intelligent vehicles: State of the art and perspectives

Recently, a large emphasis has been devoted to Automatic Vehicle Guidance since the automation of driving tasks carries a large number of benefits, such as the optimization of the use of transport infrastructures, the improvement of mobility, the minimization of risks, travel time, and energy consumption. This paper surveys the most common approaches to the challenging task of Autonomous Road Following reviewing the most promising experimental solutions and prototypes developed worldwide using AI techniques to perceive the environmental situation by means of artificial vision. The most interesting results and trends in this field as well as the perspectives on the evolution of intelligent vehicles in the next decades are also sketched out. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.