Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Embedded Vision in Advanced Driver
Assistance Systems
Zoran Nikolic
Abstract
Throughout history, advances in transportation systems have had large
economic and cultural impact. Mobility has changed the way people live and auto-
mobiles continue to evolve by becoming smarter and by leveraging cutting-edge tech-
nologies. Over the last three decades, we witnessed a tremendous growth of computer
vision knowledge through research in academia and industry. More recently, in the
last decade, we are finally seeing exciting applications of computer vision. Computer
vision plays a fundamental role in the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS),
a field which is of particular interest to the evolution of transportation systems. For
example, forward-facing driver assistance functions (such as road sign detection,
lane departure warning, and autonomous emergency braking) are heavily relying on
information received from a camera. The systems capture video data at high frame
rate and process this information in order to warn the driver that the car is moving
faster than the posted speed limit or to tell the driver of an unintentional lane drift.
The goal of this chapter is to outline key components of ADAS, show how computer
vision fits in the system, and describe its contribution to success of ADAS.
3.1 Introduction
Over the course of the twentieth century, automobiles evolved from an expensive
toy with a 0.55kW (less than 1 horsepower) engine and three wire-spoke wheels
[
1
] into, we might say, a basic need of modern life. Today, automobiles dominate
passenger travel. The total distance traveled by vehicles in the US increased by 155%
from 1970 to 2010 [
2
]. In 2013, about 87 million vehicles were produced worldwide,
22 million of those for the Chinese market [
3
]. The development of the automobile
continues to drive economic, environmental, and cultural trends.
Mobility enhances quality of life but this comes at a high price. For example,
approximately 1.24 million people died on roads around the globe in 2010 [
4
]. Even
(
B
)
Texas Instruments, Inc., Houston, TX, USA
e-mail: nikolicz@ti.com
Z. Nikolic
