Distance measurement system for autonomous vehicles using stereo camera

• Published in: Array (New York) 2020-03, Vol.5, p.100016, Article 100016
• Main Authors: Zaarane, Abdelmoghit, Slimani, Ibtissam, Al Okaishi, Wahban, Atouf, Issam, Hamdoun, Abdellatif
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Distance measurement; Image processing; Stereo camera; Stereo vision; Vehicle detection
• ISSN: 2590-0056; 2590-0056
• DOI: 10.1016/j.array.2020.100016

The focus of this paper is inter-vehicles distance measurement which is a very important and challenging task in image processing domain. Where it is used in several systems such as Driving Safety Support Systems (DSSS), autonomous driving and traffic mobility. In the current paper, we propose an inter-vehicle distance measurement system for self-driving based on image processing. The proposed system uses two cameras mounted as one stereo camera, in the hosting vehicle behind the rear-view mirror. The detection of vehicles is performed first in a single camera using a recent powerful work from the literature. Then, the same vehicle is detected in the image captured by the second camera using template matching technique. Thus, the inter-vehicle distance is calculated using a simple method based on the position of the vehicle in both cameras, geometric derivations and additional technical data such as distance between the cameras and some other specific angles (e.g. the cameras view field angle). The results of the extensive experiments showed the high accuracy of the proposed method compared to the previous works from literature and it allows to measure efficiently the distances between the vehicles and the hosting vehicle. In addition, this method could be used in several systems of various domains in real time regardless of the object types. The experiments results were done on a Hardware Processor System (HPS) located in a VEEK-MT2S provided by TERASIC.