Image signal processing for front camera based automated driver assistance system

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are designed to increase driver´s situational awareness and road safety by providing essential information, warning and automatic intervention to reduce the possibility/severity of an accident. Front Camera (FC) based ADAS system uses computer vision based techniques to detect obstacles (e.g. pedestrian, cyclist etc) on road from captured image. Typical Image Signal Processing (ISP) is developed to cater cellphones and Digital Still Cameras (DSC) for purpose of human viewing unlike computer vision algorithms whose purpose is to help driver. The given paper explains typical sensor as well as ISP requirements for FC systems deployed in ADAS along with difference compared to cellphones and DSC. The paper proposes typical ISP pipeline which is tuned for computer vision (CV) application. The proposed solution is different in terms of input and output format & bit-depth, processing needs, actual processing algorithm, safety, temperature and thermal constraints. The proposed ISP pipeline is simulated on PC and can be enabled by means of mix of hardware and software on TI´s Driver Assistance (TDA) series of processors.