Development of an On-Board Crosswalk Detection for Pedestrian Protection Using a Monocular Camera

Abstract

Recent, there are many pedestrian accidents in Europe and Japan, and the rate of pedestrian fatalities is higher than the other accidents. These pedestrian accidents usually occur in complex environment such as residential or urban areas where many people exist. Many proposed active safety systems use the sensor fusion approach such as a millimeter wave radar, a LIDAR (Laser Imaging Detecting and Ranging) sensor and a monocular/stereo camera. However, it is difficult for these systems to prevent pedestrian accidents in complex environment. In addition, it is important for such active safety systems to be commercialized at a low cost and be equipped in a simple way, aiming at large-scale system penetration in automobile markets. Therefore, we developed an on-board crosswalk detection system by using a monocular camera and a warning system depending on pedestrian recognition. Crosswalk is located at the position where many people appear and the majority of pedestrian accidents occur. Based on the fact, the proposed system can achieve less false-alarm-rate of pedestrian detection by a combination of crosswalk detection and pedestrian detection. This paper shows the necessity of the crosswalk detection and warning system by the statistical data about pedestrian accidents near crosswalk. An experimental vehicle sensor and equipments used for testing are described. Next, this paper proposes an algorithm of the crosswalk detection and warning system including pedestrian detection with optical flow approach. Finally, this paper shows the feasibility of the system from the relationship between the detection distance and the rate of detection by using many video data captured in city road in Tokyo.

F2012-F03-019