Reliable system for dynamic fusion of high level data in the ProLab II demonstrator

In this paper we present a temporal multisensor fusion module called Dynamic Date Manager (DDM). This module was developed for "ProLab2", the French Driving Assistance Demonstrator of the European Prometheus Program. The goal of the DDM is to maintain a representation of the dynamic environment of the vehicle. This representation is then used by an electronic copilot to inform the driver about potential risks and collisions. The demonstrator is an ordinary car equipped with a large number of exteroceptive and proprioceptive sensors. The presented module realizes a temporal multisensor fusion. Symbolic concepts are associated to numerical data in order to filter the numerical data, evaluate reliability indexes, manage the events on the perceptive systems, classify the numerical data, and limit the uncertainties. The demonstrator's environment to be estimated consists of the state of the vehicle itself and the set of surrounding obstacles.