Improved VIDAR and machine learning-based road obstacle detection method

There are various types of obstacles in an emergency, and the traffic environment is complicated. It is critical to detect obstacles accurately and quickly in order to improve traffic safety. The obstacle detection algorithm based on deep learning cannot detect all types of obstacles because it requires pre-training. The VIDAR (Vision-IMU-based Detection and Range method) can detect any three-dimensional obstacles, but at a slow rate. In this paper, an improved VIDAR and machine learning-based obstacle detection method (hereinafter referred to as the IVM) is proposed. In the proposed method, morphological closing operation and normalized cross-correlation are used to improve VIDAR. Then, the improved VIDAR is used to quickly match and remove the detected unknown types of obstacles in the image, and the machine learning algorithm is used to detect specific types of obstacles to increase the speed of detection with the average detection time of 0.316s. Finally, the VIDAR is used to detect regions belonging to unknown types of obstacles in the remaining regions, improving detection performance with the accuracy of 92.7%. The flow of the proposed method is illustrated by the indoor simulation test. Moreover, the results of outdoor real-world vehicle tests demonstrate that the method proposed in this paper can quickly detect obstacles in real-world environments and improve detection accuracy.