Stochastic Lane Shape Estimation Using Local Image Descriptors

In this paper, we present a novel measurement model for particle-filter-based lane shape estimation. Recently, the particle filter has been widely used to solve lane detection and tracking problems, due to its simplicity, robustness, and efficiency. The key part of the particle filter is the measurement model, which describes how well a generated hypothesis (a particle) fits current visual cues in the image. Previous methods often simply combine multiple visual cues in a likelihood function without considering the uncertainties of local visual cues and the accurate probability relationship between visual cues and the lane model. In contrast, this paper derives a new measurement model by utilizing multiple kernel density to precisely estimate this probability relationship. The uncertainties of local visual cues are considered and modeled by Gaussian kernels. Specifically, we use a linear-parabolic model to describe the shape of lane boundaries on a top-view image and a partitioned particle filter (PPF), integrating it with our novel measurement model to estimate lane shapes in consecutive frames. Finally, the robustness of the proposed algorithm with the new measurement model is demonstrated on the DRIVSCO data sets.