Enhancement of the road safety with a stereo vision system based on linear cameras

In the framework of the Eureka-Prometheus project, the authors have designed an obstacle detection device based on stereo vision. Since raster-scan cameras provide far too much information for real-time processing, linear cameras are used instead and yield an efficient implementation. This paper shows how the linear images shot simultaneously by the left and right cameras are processed in order to detect and locate obstacles in front of the vehicle, how the white lines on the road are used to improve the efficiency and the reliability of the detection, and how a spatio-temporal analysis allows one to study the dynamic behaviour of the detected objects in order to determine the real obstacles. A real-world example is provided.