Image Processing for In-vehicle Smart Cameras

Smart cameras are increasingly being deployed in many automotive applications. The in-vehicle environment presents unique challenges to the camera functions and can significantly degrade the performance of smart cameras. In this paper; we present two image processing algorithms that address two of the most common challenges for in-vehicle smart cameras, namely exposure control and motion induced distortion. The proposed algorithms are very efficient and highly suitable for embedded real-time smart cameras. The algorithms were first developed for a real-time in-vehicle automatic license plate recognition smart camera but the techniques are also applicable to many other in-vehicle smart camera applications.