Detection of passing vehicles by a robot car driver

A mobile robot operating in the presence of other vehicles should be able to determine at any time whether some other vehicle is in the process of passing it. A concept of a recognition system for realizing this ability is introduced. An algorithm is presented that interprets the image sequence of a forward-looking camera and detects passing vehicles when they enter the field of view. Controlled correlation is used for feature extraction, and the rate of false detections is minimized by applying a motion criterion. The algorithm operates in real time. It has been tested with recorded highway scenes played back and interpreted in real time