A Review of Vehicle Detection Techniques for Intelligent Vehicles

Robust and efficient vehicle detection is an important task of environment perception of intelligent vehicles, which directly affects the behavior decision-making and motion planning of intelligent vehicles. Due to the rapid development of sensor and computer technology, the algorithm and technology of vehicle detection have been updated rapidly. But, there are few reviews on vehicle detection of intelligent vehicles, especially covering all kinds of sensors and algorithms in recent years. This article presents a comprehensive review of vehicle detection approaches and their applications in intelligent vehicle systems to analyze the development of vehicle detection, with a specific focus on sensor types and algorithm classification. First, more than 300 research contributions are summarized in this review, including all kinds of vehicle detection sensors (machine vision, millimeter-wave radar, lidar, and multisensor fusion), and the performance of the classic and latest algorithms was compared in detail. Then, the application scenarios of vehicle detection with different sensors and algorithms were analyzed according to their performance and applicability. Moreover, we also systematically summarized the methods of vehicle detection in adverse weather. Finally, the remaining challenges and future research trends were analyzed according to the development of intelligent vehicle sensors and algorithms.