A dynamic vision algorithm to locate a vehicle on a nonstructured road

In this article, we present a method of nonmarked road following that is based on images coming from an onboard monochromatic camera. The principle is based first on a segmentation stage that makes it possible to locate the road area in the image, managing, if possible, the shadows on the roadway. The method is original since the algorithm must be running day as well as night (infrared camera) so it does not use color images. Furthermore, a single constant threshold is used whatever the analyzed sequence. Then, a localization stage estimates the vehicle's location on the roadway. The estimate of the parameters L (road width) and or (camera inclination angle) (assumed known and constant for certain existing approaches) ensures a greater robustness of the other estimated parameters. Finally, a filtering stage is applied onto the previous data and predicts the position of the vehicle in the next image. Results ave shown for each stage on both a normal nonmarked road and a forest lane sequence. The computational times are very low and will permit a real-time implementation on an experimental vehicle.