Multiple sensor fusion for detecting location of curbs, walls, and barriers

Knowledge of the location of curbs, walls, or barriers is important for guidance of vehicles or for the understanding of their surroundings. We have developed a method to detect such continuous objects alongside and in front of a host vehicle. We employ a laser line stripper, a vehicle state estimator, a video camera, and a laser scanner to detect the object at one location, track it alongside the vehicle, search for it in front of the vehicle and eliminate erroneous readings caused by occlusion from other objects.