Dynamic situation and threat assessment for collision warning systems: the EUCLIDE approach

Situation and threat assessment is considered as the highest level of abstraction in the vehicle tracking processes. In this paper, a broad discussion is introduced on algorithms for active safety functions, whilst a new dynamic algorithm is proposed. This approach handles all objects\´ states as dynamic stochastic variables and based on a Kalman approach calculates in real time all trajectories respectively. Thus, a reconstruction of the traffic scene can be achieved in order to assess a level of threat for all moving and stationary obstacles in the longitudinal area of the subject vehicle. This approach is adopted in the European co-funded project "EUCLIDE", which develops a vision enhancement and collision warning system merging the functionality of an infrared camera and mmw radar sensor. Results are presented using simulated and real data sets from dedicated sessions.