Data fusion for overtaking vehicle detection based on radar and optical flow

Trustworthiness is a key point when dealing with vehicle safety applications. In this paper an approach to a real application is presented, able to fulfill the requirements of such demanding applications. Most of commercial sensors available nowadays are usually designed to detect front vehicles but lack the ability to detect overtaking vehicles. The work presented here combines the information provided by two sensors, a Stop&Go radar and a camera. Fusion is done by using the unprocessed information from the radar, and computer vision based on optical flow. The basic capabilities of the commercial systems are upgraded giving the possibility to improve the front vehicles detection system, by detecting overtaking vehicles with a high positive rate.