Stereo Vision-Based Road Debris Detection System for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Reliable detection of obstacles around an autonomous vehicle is essential to avoid potential collision and ensure safe driving. However, a vast majority of existing systems are mainly focused on detecting large obstacles such as vehicles, pedestrians, and so on. Detection of small obstacles such as road debris, which pose a serious potential threat are often overlooked. In this article, a novel stereo vision-based road debris detection algorithm is proposed that detects debris on the road surfaces and estimates their height accurately. Moreover, a collision warning system that could warn the driver of an imminent crash by using 3D information of detected debris has been studied. A novel feature-based classifier that uses a combination of strong and weak features has been developed for the proposed algorithm, which identifies debris from selected candidates and calculates its height. 3D information of detected debris and vehicle’s speed are used in the collision warning system to warn the driver to safely maneuver the vehicle. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated by implementing it on a passenger vehicle. Experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm can successfully detect debris of ≥5 cm height for up to a 22 m distance with an accuracy of 90%. Moreover, the debris detection algorithm runs at 20 Hz in a commercially available stereo camera making it suitable for real-time applications in commercial vehicles.