Crowdsourcing Techniques for Environmental Information Using Additional Evaluation of Vision Based Driver Assistant Systems

The spread of the driver assistance systems and the growing importance of their vision component open new possibilities for constructing such database, which describe the environment online in deep details. The onboard vision system of a state of the art vehicle delivers much more information than we need for its basic tasks. By use of additional evaluation of the visual information, and with the installation of extension elements and communication tools we achieve a cheap data source for a couple of new applications. We will show the effectivity of this idea on our new system for the database's development of the road surface status by crowdsourcing. The windshield mounted video camera of the vehicle extended by a cheap laser light strip illuminator and robust software solution produces detailed description of the road surface profile along the movement's track. The type of the deviation of the surface from the needed value together with the GPS position of the failure's location will be transmitted to the central database. Based on this information the maintenance works logistic can be optimized, which reduces the cost of the road repair enormously.