Patent ID: 8750567
Filing Date: 2014-06-10
Classification: B60W,G06K,G06T

Abstract:
1. A method of detecting road edges in a road of travel for clear path detection, the method comprising the steps of: capturing input images of a scene exterior of the vehicle utilizing an image capture device, the input images being captured at various time step frames; generating a transformed image from the captured image; performing edge analysis on the transformed image for detecting line candidates; identifying an initial vanishing point in the captured image as a function of the line candidates; tracking the line candidates identified in a next frame; estimating a vanishing point in the next frame based on the tracked line candidates; selecting respective line candidates in the next frame that are associated with the vanishing point of the next frame; identifying a region of interest in the captured image for each line candidate, each region of interest including a respective line candidate and a surrounding region of the respective line candidate; extracting features relating to the line candidate from the region of interest; inputting the extracted features to a classifier for identifying whether the line candidate is a potential road edge, the classifier assigning a confidence value to the line candidate that identifies a probability of whether the line candidate is a road edge; and identifying the potential line candidate as a reliable road edge based on the confidence value being greater than a predetermined value.