Lane Detection System for Vehicle Platooning using Multi-information Map

This paper proposes a method of lane marker detection for platooning. In order to reduce air resistance, it is desirable to shorten the distance between two vehicles. If the vehicular gap is very short, conventional methods, which detect lane markers ahead in images captured from a front camera, are useless because lane markers are occluded by a vehicle in front. To solve this problem, the proposed method recognizes a lane markers in images captured from two downward side cameras equipped with the front side and the rear side of a vehicle. First, candidate points of lane markers are extracted in each image by edge pair detection. Then, straight lines representing lane marker are detected by applying Hough transform to these candidate points. A lateral position in a traffic lane is estimated from a position of a straight line in an image of each downward side camera. A yaw angle toward a traffic lane is calculated by using these lateral positions and the distance between two downward side cameras. Because a downward side camera can take only a narrow area directly under it, lane markers must be detected from short parts of them. Therefore, the proposed method uses a multi-information map containing lane marker information to detect lane markers. The proposed method has been implemented in the image processing hardware whose CPU satisfies on-vehicle specifications. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method and a lane detection device. In experiments conducted at the test course and the highway under construction, the vehicle ran at 80 km/h along the straight lane automatically.