Dynamic Panoramic Surround Map: Motivation and Omni Video Based Approach

Awareness of what surrounds a vehicle directly affects the safe driving and maneuvering of an automobile. Surround information or maps can help in ethnographic studies of driver behavior as well as provide a critical input in the development of effective driver assistance system. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Dynamic Panoramic Surround (DPS) map that shows the nearby surroundings of the vehicle, and detects the objects of importance on the road. Omnidirectional cameras which give a panoramic view of the surroundings can be useful for visualizing and analyzing the nearby surroundings of the vehicle. A novel approach for synthesizing the DPS using stereo and motion analysis of video images from a pair of omni-directional cameras on the vehicle is developed. Successful generation of DPS in experimental runs on an instrumented vehicle testbed is demonstrated. These experiments prove the basic feasibility and show promise of omni video based DPS capture algorithm to provide useful semantic descriptors of the state of moving vehicles and obstacles in the vicinity of a vehicle.