Extraction of road region using stereo images

Extracting the road region in an observed image is an important technique for visual navigation of an autonomous vehicle. In this paper, we propose a road extraction method using stereo images. The method does not rely on the existence of any specific road painting or texture. Instead, it supposes that a road (or a passable part) can be approximated by a plane. Then, a homography matrix which represents a geometric relation between the road plane and the stereo images can be computed from the stereo images. And the road region can be extracted in the observed image by transforming one image by the homography matrix and simple matching. In this method, neither a predetermined geometric relation between the cameras and the road nor a strong camera calibration are necessary. Experimental results with real scenes have shown the effectiveness of the proposed method