Real-time image analysis for vision guided vehicle control

Presents an overview of a three year investigation into vision guided road vehicle control conducted by a team at the University of Bristol. The goal was to develop a parallel computer architecture, based on the Inmos transputer, which is capable of real-time analysis of video images obtained from a camera mounted on the front of a vehicle. Much of the algorithm development is based on analysis of prerecorded videos of typical road scenes. However, one version of the system is battery powered and small enough to reside entirely on a small electric vehicle that is used as a demonstrator. The algorithms being investigated are parallelised to a sufficient degree to allow them to operate at near frame rates (10-20 frames per sec). Two principal approaches have been adopted: road edge detection, and surface segmentation