Near Zone Pedestrian Detection using a Low-Resolution FIR Sensor

This paper explores the possibility to use a single low-resolution FIR camera for detection of pedestrians in the near zone in front of a vehicle. A low resolution sensor reduces the cost of the system, as well as the amount of data that needs to be processed in each frame. We present a system that makes use of hot-spots and image positions of a near constant bearing to detect potential pedestrians. These detections provide seeds for an energy minimization algorithm that fits a pedestrian model to the detection. Since false alarms are hard to tolerate, the pedestrian model is then tracked, and the distance-to-collision (DTC) is measured by integrating size change measurements at sub-pixel accuracy, and the car velocity. The system should only engage braking for detections on a collision course, with a reliably measured DTC. Preliminary experiments on a number of recorded near collision sequences indicate that our method may be useful for ranges up to about 10 m using an 80 times 60 sensor, and somewhat more using a 160 times 120 sensor. We also analyze the robustness of the evaluated algorithm with respect to dead pixels, a potential problem for low-resolution sensors.