Active vision for road scene awareness

Abstract

We present a mapping approach to road scene awareness based on active stereo vision. We generalise traditional static multi-camera rectification techniques to enable active epipolar rectification with a mosaic representation of the output. The approach is used to apply standard static depth mapping and optical flow techniques to the active case. We use the framework to extract the ground plane and segment moving objects in dynamic scenes using arbitrarily moving cameras on a moving vehicle. The approach enables an estimation of the velocity of the vehicle relative to the road, and the velocity of objects in the scene. We provide footage of preliminary results of the system operating in real-time, including dynamic object extraction and tracking, ground plane extraction, and recovery of vehicle velocity.