Pedestrian Protection Systems: Issues, Survey, and Challenges

• Published in: IEEE transactions on intelligent transportation systems 2007-09, Vol.8 (3), p.413-430
• Main Authors: Gandhi, T., Trivedi, M.M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accidents; Active safety; Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Collision avoidance; Collision dynamics; Computer science; control theory; systems; computer vision; Control theory. Systems; Dealing; Driver circuits; Exact sciences and technology; Ground, air and sea transportation, marine construction; Human factors; Infrastructure; intelligent driver support; intelligent/safe vehicles; Mathematical models; Pattern recognition. Digital image processing. Computational geometry; Pedestrian safety; Pedestrians; person detection and tracking; Robotics; Safety; Sensors; Traffic accidents & safety; Transportation
• ISSN: 1524-9050; 1558-0016
• DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2007.903444

This paper describes the recent research on the enhancement of pedestrian safety to help develop a better understanding of the nature, issues, approaches, and challenges surrounding the problem. It presents a comprehensive review of research efforts underway dealing with pedestrian safety and collision avoidance. The importance of pedestrian protection is emphasized in a global context, discussing the research programs and efforts in various countries. Pedestrian safety measures, including infrastructure enhancements and passive safety features in vehicles, are described, followed by a systematic description of active safety systems based on pedestrian detection using sensors in vehicle and infrastructure. The pedestrian detection approaches are classified according to various criteria such as the type and configuration of sensors, as well as the video cues and classifiers used in detection algorithms. It is noted that collision avoidance not only requires detection of pedestrians but also requires collision prediction using pedestrian dynamics and behavior analysis. Hence, this paper includes research dealing with probabilistic modeling of pedestrian behavior for predicting collisions between pedestrians and vehicles.